One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Performances capture the disturbing community of a psychiatric institution
Photo Maria Vartanova
The biggest mistake of Randle P. McMurphy’s life was not to break the law but to assume that serving his time in a mental institution would be easier than being sent to a work farm.
At first, he sees the “cuckoo’s nest” where he — the cuckoo — lands (modeled on the Oregon State Insane Asylum in the 1960s) as a breeze. He wins assorted bets with the other patients, brings a little sunshine into their lives, even persuades an apparently catatonic patient to talk and thinks he can win his battle with the sadistic head nurse.
But this is not a fight between equals. It is a power struggle between an administration that holds all the chips and a patient who has been committed and may not leave at will.
In some respects, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, dramatized from Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel by Dale Wasserman, is dated. Electroshock treatments and lobotomies are no longer considered state-of-the-art treatments for mentally ill patients. Neither are the T-groups of the 1960s and 70s that ripped people apart emotionally (and did not always put them back together again) a regular part of therapy any longer.