Theatre review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Former Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre Clint Dyer moves down the road to the Old Vic to direct a somewhat reimagined look at One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dale Wasserman's play based on Ken Kesey's novel about order versus anarchy - where order comes across very much as the bad guy. In a 1960s New Orleans mental asylum, the patients appear to be steadily and quietly getting on with their treatment under Dr Spivey (Matthew Steer) and Nurse Ratched (Future Dame Olivia Williams.) But when R.P. McMurphy (Aaron Pierre) arrives on the ward, having accepted a diagnosis of psychopathy and committal instead of a five-month prison sentence, his rebellious attitude quickly reveals the real power dynamic in the asylum. He makes it his mission to bring some fun and unpredictability to the inmates, but has no idea the lengths Ratched is willing to go to to stop him.

FDOW was a late replacement in the role of Ratched, and Ian said later he'd been worried beforehand that she seems too nice to really do justice to the role. In a way this affable image is what sells the performance though.

So we meet a head nurse who appears to be strictly but gently looking out for the wellbeing of her patients, following a precise daily schedule of activities, therapy and chores to help calm them (as well, of course, as the constant dosing up with drugs, although that felt to me like a less foregrounded part of the story here than in the past.) So there's an insidious quality to the way she reveals her hold on power to be the only thing she cares about: The discredited treatments like electroshock and lobotomies she dishes out may have still been in use at the time, but not in the way she uses them as punishment, not cure.

Physically, Pierre is far from the scrappy little troublemaker usually cast as McMurphy - at a muscular 6ft 3, when he first arrives in the ward and asks to fight the top dog he seems like he'll be a credible threat to the other patients, before revealing the sense of humour that's more self-destructive than anything else. It's particularly notable in his scenes with the giant Chief Bromden - the 6ft 4 Arthur Boan seems positively twinky next to his scene partner, and his comments about being "little" don't seem as bitterly ironic when they can look each other in the eye.

It does lend McMurphy a different quality though, of someone whose physicality has made him sure he's in control at all times, and who learns the hard way that this isn't true. Probably the most interesting thing about Pierre's performance is the ambiguity he puts around the character's sanity: In the past I've felt the character has been played firmly as the con-man who's made a terrible mistake in his attempt to get out of jail, but here there's a jitteriness that suggests maybe the initial psychiatric assessment wasn't entirely wrong.

The third marquee name is Giles Terera as Dale Harding, the fussy inmate designated as president of the ward (yes, once again Terera plays a character with "president" somewhere in the job description) in an attempt to give the patients the misconception they have any control. He's an amiable, funny and gently sad presence that leads a supporting cast of patients including Kedar Williams-Stirling, who strongly suggests Billy Bibbit's stutter was the only issue he ever had until his mother and Ratched built up his numerous other insecurities.

Which does lead on to a couple of ways where the play hasn't aged well, and where the production could have acknowledged this more than it does. Dyer's production has a majority black cast, and though this extends to the orderlies it does give the added element of a group of black men being controlled and told their place by a carefully-designed system. There's also an idea of linking the story to the origins of the New Orleans Mardi Gras in black and Native American communities, and although I can see the link in carnival being a time for the kind of release and chaos that the inmates aren't permitted, the idea doesn't quite come together. And while Ben Stones' in-the-round design is great at making the front row look uncomfortably close and complicit, it remains a clinical space.

This high concept not quite clicking means some of the more dated themes that are in the original story stand out: Some of the mentally ill characters are treated as sideshows or comic relief by Kesey, even if the cast including Ene Frost, Jason Pennycooke, Javone Prince and Mo Sesay give them a bit more depth than that.

But even more so, between Harding's wife and Billy's mother being blamed for their conditions, and the main villain Nurse Ratched also puppeteering the nominally in-charge Spivey, there's definitely a strain of misogyny to the narrative, and a lot of references to emasculation and castration that could have come straight out of a manosphere influencer's mouth. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has uniformly strong performances and works very effectively as a dark thriller, but at a time when stories are being reframed around toxic masculinity whether the conceit works or not, it's ironic to see a high-profile one that could have done with more of that reframing.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Dale Wasserman, based on the novel by Ken Kesey, is booking until the 23rd of May at the Old Vic.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.