Chris Baillie asked us to get tickets to see One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest at Carriageworks Theatre in The Electric Press last night, and here’s her glowing review …
Having previously worked in mental health in Leeds for many years, I was keen to go and see the play ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’ at the Carriageworks last night.
Reading the book was pretty much a standard expectation for mental health workers in my day, and I thoroughly enjoyed the sense of rebellion and kicking against conformity that it portrayed. Community Care was all the rage in the late eighties and the institutions were becoming de-populated. However, High Royds was still a regular visit for my service users, and the locked wards were still very scary places, so I was interested to see how the Leeds Art Centre would interpret it for the stage. Jack Nicholson would be a hard act to follow!
I have to say though, I was not disappointed. The American accents threw me at the start but I quickly became used to them, and they were done very well. The tics, spasms and nuances associated with mental health were very well portrayed by the cast, and often very amusing. Martini played by Barry Green, was a schizophrenic who suffered hallucinations. He gave playing cards and passed the basketball to empty spaces to shouts of, ‘For God’s sake, stop hallucinating – there’s no one there’! Not an approach I had ever tried, I must say.
The cast were excellent. I am always impressed when people can remember so much dialogue – and the story had me gripped throughout, helped along by the chief’s monologues. I found myself willing him to raise his hand for the unanimous vote to change the tv viewing schedule. The star of the show for me however, was Lewis Burke who played Billy Bibbit, a challenging role to do both an American accent and a stutter, but an emotional performance nonetheless.
My only two criticisms would be that nurse Ratched should really have been played by someone older and more intimidating (more like me, as a colleague pointed out today! You were cut out for the role: Ed). The staging was also a little distracting. I didn’t mind chairs etc being moved by the patients, but felt the five minutes spent moving the nurses’ station for the ECT scene was unnecessary and cumbersome.
However, don’t let that put you off. The play is well worth seeing whether you have an interest in mental health or not. I am definitely converted to going to the Carriageworks more often.
I have to admit that I, unfortunately, was not impressed with this production. Having read Kesey’s novel, seen the film and seen a production of Dale Wasserman’s stage adaptation before, I cannot help but feel that this performance missed the mark. I was incredibly dubious reading Pip Tibbets’ directors note and seeing that he had decided to give the play a ‘timeless’ setting; this seemed like a bold move considering the play deals with issues such as the controversy of lobotomy procedures and the government purchasing of Native American land, both deeply rooting the play into the 1960s! I could maybe have looked past this if the setting seemed to be truly ‘timeless’, but Mr Tibbets’ interpretation of ‘timeless’ seems to be a mixture of bric-a-brac items on stage with very little inter-generational cross over.
However, the biggest let down for me was in the lack of understanding of the characters themselves. I would like to make it very clear that the actors performed their rolls very well, but it was such a shame that they were all shown as one dimensional caricatures, not mentally sensitive human beings! Inconsistencies like Scanlon making homophobic remarks (“just admit you’re a faggot”) and then embracing and kissing other patients in the following scenes was glaringly obvious. Billy Bibbit’s high pitched cartoon-esque portrayal in the first half gave no indication that Billy was a deeply scarred and fragile character but seemed to have much more of an essence of an endearing Looney Tunes character, thus making his suicide in the penultimate scene completely lose its emotional impact.
You may thing I am being overly harsh but the overall issue is that this play is not a comedy; it has comic aspects but so do Shakespearean tragedies, it does not have to be made into a comic play! By establishing the play as a comedy in the first half, the impact of the second, much darker half of the play is completely lost. After being assaulted by McMurphy, Nurse Ratched returned to the stage in a neck brace to an outburst of laughter from the audience, completely ruining the dramatic and powerful ending. I cannot help but feel this would have been avoided if it wasn’t set up as a comedy.
Though I understand that Mr Tibbets production was entertaining and enjoyable for the audience, I could not appreciate it at all because of the ‘comic’ interpretation of the play. The overly comic portrayal of the characters on stage completely trivialized the incredibly sensitive themes of the play and ruined all of the emotional impact this powerful play has the potential to show.
I understand that this was an amateur production, but as an amateur dramatist myself I cannot help but think that this show had so much potential within the script and the talented cast that was not tapped into by the director.
John, you are wrong. They were talented, devoted and believable. Billy nearly brought me to tears both in a comical and emotional sense. Also you are a grundel for writing such a long shit review that noone cares about.
I really don’t agree with you. The play did not come across as overly comedic (you must have seen it on a different night as there were few laughs on the first night from the audience). The characters’ interpretation of the physical side of mental health issues, such as the Parkinson like symptoms, was excellent.
I thoroughly enjoyed the play. The patients were believable and, at times, darkly comedic – I had the tightest stomach muscles when I worked on mental health from all of the laughter!
As an amateur play dealing with a difficult subject I thought the interpretation was very good.
I don’t want to come across as disrespectful but it is absolutely undeniable that the play was desperately fishing for laughs. I saw the play on Saturday night and was thoroughly disappointed; as a powerful piece of drama it was completely lost and turned into a mockery.
Oh, and it was Cheswick who had the cartoon voice. Billy was the stutterer.
Yes Cheswick had a silly cartoon voice, but Billy Bibbits stutter, played in a silly high pitched voice, was equally over-played. An unrealistic representation of a serious play.
Lol thanks OP. I’ll come back when I’m 25, yeah?
I think that given time constraints, the director and cast had to work realistically within the limits they have/had. You can’t go laboriously into too much detail involving the characters like the book did as the audience lose interest as a consequence. It’s one of those problems transferring great literature onto screen or stage. After all, reading a book you can take as many toilet and coffee breaks as you like, even taking the novel with you, but in theatre you don’t have that luxury without missing key sections.
But when all’s said and done John, the show was a success.
And btw “Mr Tibbets” as you put it is actually a lady director.