Berkshires arts reviews

July 12, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Director Eric Hill’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest on the Berkshire Theatre Festival Stage is a contender for Best Play in a Berkshire season that has produced several gems already.

Jonathan Epstein and Linda Hamilton. Photos by Kevin Sprague.

Dale Wasserman’s play, produced on Broadway almost fifty years ago, is in itself a classic jewel adapted from Ken Kesey’s novel and wisely leaving intact the narrator, a seven-foot tall Indian, Chief Bromden, the paranoid deaf-mute who links the scenes in moments of flashing light and sounds of world disaster. He becomes one of the three leading characters.

The plot centers on the conflict between McMurphy, a rowdy, boisterous, self-confident, hero who gets himself committed to a psychiatric ward in a mental hospital to escape a stretch in jail and finds himself in a to-the-death battle with Nurse Ratched, a petite iron maiden in starchy white who rules the ward from her magnificent glass booth but often descends, acidly sweet-voiced for group therapy sessions of controlled tyranny.

It’s a great play and the current production is magnificent, glorious, impeccable and half a dozen more adjectives. Every role is perfectly cast, meticulously played, delicately nuanced and timed to the flick of a wrist or a gaping pause before a response.

Heading the cast is Jonathan Epstein as McMurphy, who struts into the ward a rowdy schemer in leather jacket and cap with dirty cards in his hip pocket. Incarcerated, he is appalled at the docility of his fellow inmates and sets about fighting the system. He is joyous, self-confident, and although out for himself honestly moved to helping the weaklings who cringe in the ward’s policies. Epstein inhabits each role he plays with a creativity and control that is ever a joy to experience. He is an awesome McMurphy.

As his antagonist Big Nurse Ratched, Linda Hamilton, seems to him an easy target, not as sharp as he is, soft-spoken if starchy. Hamilton gives us a nurse who if she has a heart at all, it is one of steel. And she too is sharp, knowing exactly what words will wound a patient back into submission, what threats must in the end be unemotionally acted upon to keep her in power.

Austin Durant as Chief Bromden

Austin Durant as Chief Bromden is the third star of this star-studded cast. Durant moves through the plot like a somnambulist and when he must, he acts. He may mostly be deaf-dumb but when he speaks his voice is thunder.

Among the inmates who stand out, although each is a successfully developed character, no matter how many lines he may have, are Randy Harrison, the tortured teen-ager Billy Babbit who can never please his mother, who stutters his words, and cannot be saved.

Dale Harding (Tommy Schrider) he of the fluttering hands, he the spokesman of the “acute” (not too far gone group) who tries to make McMurphy understand the limitations of their situation. Who at times joins in a defiant move but is quickly cowed by Big Nurse and his own insecurities.

Even a small, without lines role, such as that of Ruckly, played by Stew Nantell, crucified on his wall, is memorable.

The set spans the full BTF stage with great windows dominating the stage right wall. These during the narrator moments of dark stage and time changes can flare red or purple or green or be flicked over with the blinking lights that envelope Chief Bromden. The sound elements, not of the natural world, that accompany these transitions are again the right ones and timed in seconds. Nothing seems to have been overlooked in the executing of this production.

As a reviewer, after five minutes into the play, I tucked my notebook into my bag and just reveled in what was before me. Eric Hill and his actors and his production team had it all well in hand. There is joy in this play as well as sadness and conflict. And in a way there is triumph as well. Great things are going on and well-worth viewing.

Berkshire Theatre Festival information, links, map, directions.

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