Fine performances from Aaron Pierre, Giles Terera and others illuminate Clint Dyer’s relentless revival of this iconic but problematic counter-cultural artefact. A 1962 novel, 1963 play, 1975 film and an alluring star vehicle for an actor, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest uses a psychiatric ward as a metaphor for the controlling state. Dyer has cast black actors as the patients – and the orderlies - to reflect the enduring fact that black men are far more likely to be committed to an institution, in both the UK and US, than whites. It works.
But Dale Wasserman’s stage adaptation, like Ken Kesey’s book, draws a queasy equivalence between madness and liberation. These inmates become footsoldiers of the 60s revolution, heroically throwing off the constricting bonds of sanity. Since the forces of (white) authority are primarily vested in Olivia Williams’s autocratic, manipulative and sour Nurse Ratched, a nasty spine of misogyny runs through the story. Williams stepped into the production late, after Michelle Gomez withdrew, though you wouldn’t know it from her focused, resolutely unsympathetic performance.
