One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I also want to recommend SF Playhouse's production: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The cast headlining with Hansford Prince as Randell P. McMurphy, Michael Torres as Chief Bromden, and Susi Damilano as Nurse Ratched is oh my goodness such an important journey into the American mind via those who are quarantined in a psychiatric ward. They are mentally ill or sick, yet by the end of the Dale Wasserman's play, based on Ken Kesey's novel, the audience questions the notion of sanity and who gets to decide the Nurse Ratcheds of the McMurphys.

The acting is riveting as the story boils and bubbles like an upset stomach to its git wrenching conclusion (pun intended). Because Hansford Prince is black one can't help but reflect on the creation of the Negro from the African, the notion of his being "blind, deaf and dumb to the knowledge of himself," as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad used to say, but on Nurse Ratched's floor, the ward where the patients are curable, it is McMurphy who is able to rekindle the spark long extinguished of dimmed by the institution which is a metaphor for society and its systems the populace has minimal control over, if at all like public education, local, state, and national government, the military, and the laws which govern our day to day interactions with one another. McMurphy is in the mental hospital because he is trying to escape the Farm or penitentiary.

Hansford Prince's McMurphy proposes a wager to the men he meets that he can change the system, that he can beat Murse Ratched, take away her absolute control and the audience roots for him, as do the men who are not as brave as he. One learns that conformity is often a choice people make, because they do not realize their internal strength, like Michael Torres' Chief Bromden.

McMurphy is the hero and Ratched is certainly the villain, Susi Damilano, great in her portrayal of a woman who stops at nothing to keep the men in her hospital subdued, cowered, hopeless. It is McMurphy's innate knowledge of human nature and love for humanity that is his downfall, similar to the demise of men like Martin Ling, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass and Marcus Garvey. There are no systems in place to support such revolutionary movements, so eventually the leader meets the fate of McMurphy, but in the case of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chief Bromden leaves us with hope that as President Obama likes to say, "Change is possible."

In his brief encounter with McMurphy, Bromden learns that he is strong and that the Nurse Ratcheds are not in control if he decides he doesn't want them to be. McMurphy wants to give the men back their lives, and even though he seemingly looses, he is successful.

The play continues through September 5, 2009. Thursday night is a talk-back. Visit www.sfplayhouse.org or call (415) 677-9596. The theatre is located at 533
Sutter Street (one block off Union Square, between Powell and Mason).


Cast, director, and my friend Karla and I at SF Playhouse this week.