One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, adapted from Ken Kesey’s book by Dale Wasserman, is exactly like the movie but without Jack Nicholson’s star power. The cast have to impersonate lunatics for 150 minutes and they clearly love their job.
Playing madmen comes naturally to actors and it’s an easy task because no creative discipline is required. Lunatics are capable of anything so the actor needn’t feel anxious about making a false move or indulging in an improbable gesture. Anything goes. The result is a hectic display of lazy, unfelt, superficial and repetitive caricatures. One actor holds a toolbox in his lap like a pet dog. Another jerks obsessively. A third leans against a pillar with his arms held out, dribbling and twitching. A fourth shuffles around in a Hugh Hefner dressing-gown.
The moribund atmosphere of the clinic is disturbed by the arrival of Mac (Aaron Pierre) who poses as a rebel and challenges all the rules. Mac is like the Fonz. He can’t succeed in the adult world so he joins a community of clueless inadequates whom he can easily dominate. His desire to bully everyone is made far easier by the slapdash regulations that are ineptly enforced by a crew of hopeless goons.
There’s no clarity at all. Can the inmates gamble for money? No, but Mac does it anyway. Can he drink whisky? No, but he keeps a hip flask handy. Are female visitors permitted? Yes and no. Mac’s girlfriend Candy shows up but her visit is aborted by the security guards. Whenever Mac scores a victory over the idiotic system he receives another round of applause from the freakish inmates who seem to adore him. The dramatic rhythm of the show is tiresome and predictable.
Mac comes across as a verbose, attention-seeking halfwit who never stops prattling about nothing at all. Even when he’s struggling inside a straitjacket, he keeps offloading his worthless opinions. The orderlies zap his skull with 2,000 volts of juice but that has no effect either. He continues to spout drivel as soon as the shock therapy wears off.
The show’s dramatic texture is not helped by a supporting cast of one-note characters. Nurse Ratched (Olivia Williams) is a sexy sourpuss. Dale Harding (Giles Terera) is a rabbiting nuisance. Kedar Williams-Stirling plays Billy as a spasm-prone goofball. The role of Chief Bromden goes to Arthur Boan who looks like a jobless drummer from Cornwall. Surely he has no native American blood. The orderlies, dressed in white suits and black bow ties, appear to belong to a barbershop quartet.
The audience reacted to the show as if it were a feelgood comedy and they evidently relished Mac’s narcissistic personality and his constant attempts to insult and humiliate Nurse Ratched. The script makes clear that Mac is an arrogant, worthless unemployable pest who gets a transfer to the clinic to avoid working on the prison farm. And when not intimidating Nurse Ratched, he spends his time exploiting the vulnerable in-patients by winning cash from them at poker. And he’s a sex-abuser convicted of molesting a 15-year-old girl. This puts him on the same level as Jeffrey Epstein. And yet the crowd treated him like a hero and gave him a standing ovation. Very bizarre. The message from the Old Vic seems to be: ‘Three cheers for child rapists.’
Brilliantly directed by Selina Cadell, this production feels like a luxury pop-up book of theatrical anecdotes
Two Halves of Guinness is a biographical tribute to Alec Guinness written by Marc Burgess and performed by Zeb Soanes. Burgess frames the show as an address to Guinness’s mysterious father whose identity was never revealed to him by his ultra-discreet mother.
He seems to have been surprisingly pushy throughout his career. As a teenager, he looked up John Gielgud’s name in the telephone directory and called him to ask for acting lessons. Gielgud recognised his talent and rewarded him with minor roles in Shakespeare but advised him against trying to become a star.
When Guinness appeared as Malvolio, Laurence Olivier gave him a backhanded compliment: ‘I had no idea the character could be played as a bore.’ David Lean was reluctant to cast him as Fagin in Oliver Twist until Guinness showed up at the audition room wearing a wig and make-up done by a professional artist. In Kind Hearts and Coronets, Guinness himself suggested that he play all eight members of the D’Ascoyne family. To summarise the movie, Soanes mimes each death in dumbshow.
Brilliantly directed by Selina Cadell, this production feels like a luxury pop-up book of theatrical anecdotes. All the costumes and props can fit into a single trunk so it’s ideal for touring. Soanes knows how to capture Guinness’s voice and his shy facial mannerisms perfectly. He can’t quite get Laurence Olivier or Noël Coward but his impersonation of Gielgud is faultless. Surely, Sir John will be his next subject.
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