Adapting a novel from the page to the stage can be tricky. Easy to lose is the narrative voice, as the emphasis shifts from an internal perspective to external action and dialogue.
Best-known for the 1975 film that helped make Jack Nicholson a bona fide movie star, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” started life in 1962 as a groundbreaking novel by Ken Kesey and then a 1963 stage play adapted by writer Dale Wasserman.
Although the film won five Oscars and is now considered a classic, Wasserman’s stage script is much truer to Kesey’s novel, which is why a new production of the play by the Louisville Repertory Company promises to be compelling, even for those who have seen, even love, the iconic movie.
Kesey’s story of rebellion in a mental ward is narrated by Chief Bromden, the large but docile Native American patient who pretends to be deaf and mute for most of the story. From this vantage point, Chief is the keeper of the ward’s secrets. In the play, he delivers monologues that take place outside of the story’s action, which allow for the reflection and perspective of the original text.
“This adaptation not only captures the interactions among the men, the power dynamics and the sense of hope and disappointment, but it also manages to capture the element of desperation in mental illness in the narrative voice of the novel,” said director Mike Brooks, who will make his Louisville Repertory Company directorial debut.
The show, which kicks off the LRC’s 17th season, opens Thursday at the Kentucky Center’s MeX Theater and runs through Nov. 15.
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” stars Andy Pyle as outspoken wild card McMurphy, a small-time criminal who fakes crazy to finagle reassignment to a mental institution in hopes of serving his sentence in comfort. Once there, he organizes his fellow patients in an insurgency against the tyrannical Nurse Ratched (Becky Poschinger), who rules the hospital with an iron fist.
The contest of wills between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy has become a classic representation of the struggle between society’s impulse to institutionalize and control, through methods both subtle and overt, and the individual’s desire for freedom and self-determination.
“Some of the conflicts you see being played out here are not necessarily over and done with today,” Brooks said. “That said, there are moments where you could say, yes, this story is a product of that time, where they were just starting to find the language to talk about these things.”
Patient rights are also at the center of the struggle, as the hospital proved to be as punitive as, if not more than, a prison, using treatment methods such as electroshock to punish rather than cure. The story also explores racial and gender tensions, particularly in hospital staff dynamics. McMurphy’s arrival tips the balance of the asylum’s culture, sending the staff and patients into head-on conflict.
“This novel was born out of a very tumultuous time in our history, where gender roles were changing significantly and quickly, where race relations and the status quo of civil rights were changing significantly and quickly,” Brooks said. “It was so new, and these struggles were so fundamental at that time that some of the emotions and action that come out in this story are very raw.”
McMurphy’s actions spur the plot, but Chief’s emotions color the story’s enduring spirit. Actor David Levy brings a large presence to the role of Chief, both literally — he stands 6 feet 8 — and figuratively.
“David not only has the physicality the role calls for, but he brings an incredible internal and emotional life to the Chief,” Brooks said. “That narrative voice is so much of what makes this such a powerful story.”
Chief’s insightful narration allows the audience to forge a deeper connection with the patients and is central to the heart of the story, illustrating the emotional and psychological torture of being trapped in one’s own head. Stepping outside of the continuity of the action is a theatrical luxury the largely realistic film adaptation didn’t have.
“That’s a reason why theater is such a relevant art form,” Brooks said. “I love movies, but there are things you can do in theater that you just can’t do effectively in film.”
