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A group of asylum inmates pretend to watch a World Series game on a blank television. They’ve been forbidden to see the game because its airtime conflicts with the established time for TV viewing in the ward’s dayroom. Their feigned group hallucination is an act of boisterous solidarity. For a brief moment, these disparate misfits are united in giving the finger to Nurse Ratched (Suzanne Powers), their controlling overseer. Thus ends Act 1 of Dale Wasserman’s adaptation of Ken Kesey’s 1963 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with a joyous blow aimed at the powers that be.
That highpoint comes after Randle Patrick McMurphy (Trevor Williams), a repeat offender for violence and misdemeanors sent to the asylum for observation, cajoles Chief Bromden (A.M. Bhatt), a Native American assumed to be catatonic, to vote for viewing the game. It’s an unprecedented act of belonging on the Chief’s part and it sets up much of what follows. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a now-iconic anti-authoritarian story about what happens when McMurphy, a new asylum inmate, tries to shake up the strict order imposed by the nursing staff. As directed by George Kulp, the production at New Haven Theater Company emphasizes the relationship between the Chief and McMurphy as key to whether we view the play’s outcome as a defeat or a victory. Having seen both the acclaimed film version of the novel and a different version of the play earlier this season in West Hartford, I can say that this production is to be commended for successfully capturing the novel’s focus on the Chief.
The show continues its run May 2 to 4 and May 9 to 11.
As played by Bhatt, the Chief is a deeply soulful and self-possessed outsider, on the one hand, and a deeply conflicted and self-doubting sufferer on the other. His powerful inner monologues, delivered as addresses to his papa, describe his view of the asylum as dehumanizing and mechanistic. Only the Chief is a victim of mistreatment by the nurse’s aides (Tristan Bird and Aaron Volain). The other inmates — white — have all been browbeaten into an accepted routine, while permitted their individual quirks. And, until McMurphy arrives, no one dares to question Nurse Ratched’s supremacy. But McMurphy is here to break rules, he says.
In this production the confrontations between the Nurse — played like a combination of den mother, strict teacher, and confessor by Powers — and McMurphy, a cross between class clown and conman in Williams’ lively portrayal, seem less crucial than McMurphy’s gradual sense of how things are stacked against the Chief and himself. The effect McMurphy has on the Chief, and more tragically, on Billy Bibbit (Robert Thomas Halliwell) are the main dramatic outcomes.
Kulp’s direction keeps the comic elements foremost for as long as possible. A basketball game with everyone but McMurphy wearing tighty-whiteys underscores the childishness of these men. McMurphy’s jocular tone rarely flags, even when he begins to suspect that he’s being played for a patsy. Williams keeps a certain crazed light in McMurphy’s eyes, just enough to make us wonder if he might be less sane than he thinks he is.
The play offers many fine character-actor roles and Kulp’s cast rises to the challenge. J. Kevin Smith plays Dale Harding, the ringleader, as an intellectual gone askew, all bluster and meandering locutions. As the timid Bibbitt, Robert Thomas Halliwell has flashes of charm that make his condition the more pathetic. Ralph Buonocone plays the manic Martini with irrepressible glee, Joseph Mallon’s Scanlon is amusingly bristly, and Erich Greene adds Cheswick to his resumé of earnest sad sacks.
This is an ambitious production for this predominantly amateur cast. Some of the more physical aspects of the story can only be suggested, so that some scenes don’t have quite the level of violence called for. And yet the foreboding tone of Act Two fully comes across, thanks to Kulp’s lighting and sound design (the latter adds numerous atmospheric sound effects). Donna Glenn Smith’s set design gives the play a frontal presentation that puts us in the center of each scene.
At stage left is the imposing door to the ward. Constructed by Kulp himself, that door says a lot about the space of the play. It’s formidably solid in a stolid utility green, with a small window of reinforced glass. Its ponderous locking mechanism provides a striking visual reminder that these men, whether in the asylum voluntarily or not, are quarantined from society. And the society they create on the ward, with its power struggles, heroics and victims, mirrors our own societal failings back at us.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest plays at the New Haven Theater Company, 839 Chapel St., May 2 to 4 and May 9 to 11. Visit NHTC’s website for tickets and more information.