One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Garrick Theatre

Prior to seeing this play I thought nothing could top Jack Nicholson's performance as RP McMurphy in the 1975 film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And having witnessed Dale Wasserman's current stage adaptation I still hold that view but Christian Slater's performance here runs him very close.

However the main reason for seeing this wonderful play, based on the novel by Ken Kesey is that, despite the so called drive towards care in the community' the shocking treatment of McMurphy and his fellow crazies' in psychiatric care is, in certain respects, still happening today, more than 30 years later.

The play is set in the sterile confines of a US mental hospital in the early 1960s. Into this world walks McMurphy, a violent, larger-than-life gambler who has faked psychosis to avoid the drudgery of a working life. The cast of eccentrics live out their banal routines watched over by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched and are in constant fear of the brutal treatment dealt out in the electric Shock-Shop. The ensuing power struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched has shocking and dramatic results.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of psychiatric treatment such as the dreaded lobotomy or psychosurgery, from a theatrical point of view this remains a play filled with edge-of-your-seat tension, wicked humour and is as insightful as ever.

From an acting point of view Christian Slater is always in control as Randle Patrick McMurphy, the man who takes on the authorities at a psychiatric institution and briefly manages to win his battle and in doing so inspires his fellow inmates to stick up for themselves. Even though he doesn't quite have the dangerous edge that Jack Nicholson managed to portray in the role, he holds centre stage throughout leading the cast very well.

He receives particularly strong support from Alex Kingston as the impossibly normal and calm Nurse Ratched, the acceptable voice of institutionalised madness. This is fully and expertly realised in the powerful lobotomy scene when she declare McMurphy is "fine" having seen his life and spirit removed from the world.

Comedian and writer Owen O'Neil shows he has a real talent for acting as Dale Harding the wonderfully unhinged inmate who forms a meaningful bond with McMurphy who gradually and unwittingly changes his life.

Brendan Dempsey is very effective as Chief Bromden, the huge Indian who pretends to be deaf and dumb while giving a commentary on the history of the institution and its scary treatment of its patients.

He convincingly gives the impression he is the only one who really knows what's going on.

The supporting cast of inmates, Alan Douglas as Ruckly, Paul Ready as Billy Bibbitt and Gavin Robertson as Frank are suitably nuts and subservient to their treatment, while being naughtily susceptible to McMurphy's disruptive influence.

The thrust of the story asks who is actually crazy? As Jeffrey Schwartz a psychiatrist at the University of California said, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest remains a salutary warning about the psychiatric profession's potentail for institutionalised insanity." A revival of this play could not be more necessary and by the way its a great night out at the theatre.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest runs at Garrick Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London, WC2, until June 3. Tube: Leicester Square. Telephone 0870 890 1104.