One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Presented by The Elmwood Players
Director: Klaus Hermanspahn

What is the definition of normal? When does individuality stray over the misty boundaries of insanity? And who dictates the rules? These issues are thrown into bold relief in Ken Kesey's cult classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where the question of who holds the monopoly on sanity €” the doctors or the mental patients €” hovers tantalisingly in the air.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Presented by The Elmwood Players
Director: Klaus Hermanspahn

What is the definition of normal? When does individuality stray over the misty boundaries of insanity? And who dictates the rules? These issues are thrown into bold relief in Ken Kesey's cult classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where the question of who holds the monopoly on sanity €” the doctors or the mental patients €” hovers tantalisingly in the air.
In their first production of the season, Christchurch's Elmwood Players will give this familiar literary masterpiece a fresh Antipodean twist, transporting the Oregon state mental hospital into 1960s New Zealand.

The play's action takes place entirely in a hospital ward, where a group of male patients quake under the rigid strictures of the indomitable Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse who exploits their vulnerabilities to shame them into submission.

The introduction of a new inmate, however, threatens to upset the meticulous rule of the iron-clad, starch-breasted matriarch. The explosion of the brash, swaggering, larger-than-life R P "Mac" MacMurphy into the sterile, mind-numbing atmosphere of the ward revitalises the patients' flagging spirits and ignites a slow-burning flame of rebellion.

The play is at once moving, poignant and wildly funny. Between the rebellious wise-cracking MacMurphy, irrepressible Martini, stuttering boy-child Billy, inhibited Harding, neurotic Cheswick and cynical trouble-making Scanlon, the patients make mayhem. Meanwhile, ever haunting their existence are the dark spectres of electro-shock therapy and lobotomy.

As well as giving a new perspective to a well-loved story, director Klaus Hermanspahn hopes to remind audiences that this is not a tale from far, far way but happened here also. Many aspects of the play translate readily into a New Zealand interpretation: the experience of the disenfranchised half-Native American Chief Bromden, for example, has a strong resonance in the context of New Zealand Maori, where the disparities in health between Maori and Pakeha are also particularly topical.

"Fortunately the situation with mental institutions has changed," says Hermanspahn, "Nowadays mental health problems are perceived and treated differently, but sometimes the big black machine still rumbles on, and that makes the story of continuing interest today."

24 February - 4 March, 8.00pm (6.30pm on 28 Feb)
Tickets: $15 ($10 on 1 March)
Bookings through The Court Theatre, ph: (03) 963 0870 or 0800 333 100, email: bookings@courttheatre.org.nz