"a lot of laughs and a great outing"

The Town Players of Pittsfield, in operation since January 13, 1922, are presenting One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at The Robert Boland Theater on the campus of Berkshire Community College October 8 - 10.

The set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - a ward room at a mental institution - is plain and hardly capable of encouraging hope to the mentally disturbed who inhabit it. The action all takes place on the same set which clicks perfectly, chairs and a table to the left, a barred door, the nurses elevated station to the rear right separating staff from patients. Boring color, boring furniture, a way station to nowhere for the inmates.

The play, centers around a criminal who chose to serve a sentence at the mental institution instead of in jail, unaware aware that his commitment was forever, not five months as the sentence ordered.

But once there he brings his own form of help to the other inmates, giving them more respite and hope than any available from the staff at the institution.

Teddy Aspen as McMurphy, the new inmate, uses laughter as a antidote to the group therapy orchestrated by Nurse Ratched whose phony concern for her charges gives them little to grow on. The energetic McMurphy reaches out to the other patients in his effort to normalize them by bringing fun and games to their dismal structured life. He encourages them to revolt so they can watch the World Series, he brings in women as therapy for the men and he constantly confronts Ratched.

Chief Bromdon, a huge native American played by Matt Barbas, supposedly deaf and dumb, walks around the edges of the action but when the room empties he talks to his dead father of the pain he suffers from the treatment afforded his ancestor.

Nurse Ratched (Melanie Rivers) takes a while to ratchet up her anger and power but as the action intensifies in the second act she grows increasingly meaner, forcing electric shock therapy on McMurphy and later a frontal lobotomy as punishment.

Billy, Mike Grogan, brings the part of the young, insecure man to the stage with his anxious, constant picking at his clothes his demeanor graphically illustrating the depth of his suffering. He quietly admits he is "not tough."

Leo Fiorini as Ruckley, the lobotomized man who only feels safe in his Christ like position against a wall shell of a man who finally comes to a short lived energetic moment when the women appear.

The two women who come at McMurphy’s call, Candy Starr, (Sarah Sullivan) and Sandra(Lisa Murray) in short, tight skirts rouse the men from their ho hum day for a few brief moments.

The cast plays the various inmates, some more stifled than others, some whose longings are more apparent, in varied but sympathetic ways.

Based on a play by Dale Wasserman from a novel by Ken Kesey.

Tom Reardon’s direction brings out the difficult to portray individual character’s mental illnesses in a humane and insightful manner that never caricatures their problems.

Bob Boland, designed the set with a simple reality, a plain familiar hospital setting, bland and harboring human angst which all too often goes unaided.

The lighting by Marc Grinshaw, moves from day to night subtly and when the aura of a hospital operating room is needed, a spotlight on a operating table makes obvious what goes on.

Hurry out to BCC for a lot of laughs and a great outing by the Town Players of Pittsfield.