One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I've heard that audiences of Stanley Kubrick's “Full Metal Jacket” responded to the Vietnam scenes by yelling "Yah! That's what it was like." I had a similar reaction to the way the set by Nick Hrutkay, the lighting by Melanie Popp, the costumes by Cheryl Randal, and the cast worked together to create a mental hospital, a venue with which I am deeply familiar. The back of the stage, bathed with harsh white light, is a high, white wall made of utility board with those holes so you can hang things. A simple table for the endless card playing is placed stage left. Nurse Ratched speaks to the patients through a plastic megaphone while perched on a stepladder. Simple props-- sheets, a toilet brush, a toothbrush—help us experience this place as a 24-7 institution, a place where these patients live, go the bathroom, brush their teeth. A shadow of a bird’s nest, with its twigs intricately woven, reinforce both the closedness of the place and the intricacies of the boundary that traps them.

The actors playing the patients capture the energy, the spinning wheels of people put on ice. Each actor, in body language, talk, and relating to Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and the staff, act as an ongoing, convincing witness to the destructiveness of this institution.

For me, the most gruesome and famous parts of this play are moving and awful to experience, but I want to focus attention a particular part of the play which I think conveys one of its most important lessons, the "group therapy" sessions. My memory of the book and scenes from the film presented Nurse Ratched as an archetypal villain, a symbol of oppression. Aubrey Dion’s Nurse Ratched is different, and I'd like to dwell on this difference for a moment. This actress portrays a person I have met, in different genders and roles, but having some essential similarities. What comes across to me is a talented and intelligent person who is, in a sense, created by a fateful confluence of factors: a needed social role, a pool of uneducated victims, and a society that is bewildered and demoralized by the troubles of some of its citizens.

To borrow the phrase from Hannibal Lecter, describing the flesh-collecting serial killer in “The Silence of the Lambs,” Nurse Ratched was not “born,” she was “made.” We have created the conditions for a woman like her to thrive and prosper. She uses the group therapy session, and a logbook used by patients to write about each other, to reach into each patient’s spirit and clutch it, like an old Mayan priest clutching the beating heart of his sacrificial victim.

Her goal is to control these people, but not with some secret, Machiavellian plan. I would find that much more emotionally and spiritually tolerable. Instead, she is serving us. This for me is the deep meaning of this play--we have created a society that employs and shapes people to do evil, while they themselves are thinking that they are doing good.

What comes across to me most vividly about Nurse Ratched is her smile and her crafty eyes, as she looks for a handhold on the spirit of each of her charges, and looks to turn each event into an opportunity to pursue the agenda we have hired her to do, that is, to control these very sick people for their own good, and to help them to a normal life. Here pale skin, starched uniform, and long, shiny black hair make her oddly angelic. In the face of her energy, persistence, and patience—normally good qualities in a person-- the slavishness of the patients seems believable.

The director, Nick Hrutkay, made the decision to have the patients and staff sit in full view of the audience on either side of the set, in full character, while the action takes place. They are in character so continuously that when I came a bit late and couldn't find a seat, the actor playing Billy, conveying sweetness and caring, gently but firmly guided me to an empty seat.

I came to love the cast of this play, for the sincerity and energy they used to portray their characters. They present themselves as burned-out mental patients, but as we spend time with them, we see their energy, gifts and humanity. I sensed each actor in the background sending us the message: this is a worthwhile person with a soul, a body and wishes, in spite of the efforts to devalue them. It was a special pleasure to watch each character emerge from bondage, if only for a moment.

Eric Olson’s Chief, with his catatonia, opens the play with the key ingredient-- the incurability of these people, which is the linchpin that allows us to treat them with such neglect as to leave them in the hands of cracked souls like Nurse Ratched. I admired this actor’s intense concentration and the way the tenseness of his body conveys the struggle between his soul and his fear of himself.

Randle, played with energy and charming rudeness by Alex Wersted, is the catalyst and ringleader—my favorite expression of this is when he acts as a basketball coach in an illicit game he organizes in the ward—and the patients and the staff respond with verve. Ray O’Hare’s Dale Harding responds to Randle’s arrival with a witty reference to “High Noon.” O’Hare, through skilled use of his body and voice, goes on to capture Dale’s contradictions—a flow of poetry in his speech but stagnation in the swamp Nurse Ratched maintains.

Ruckley, a victim of brain-damaging electroshock procedures, is played by Morgan Gavaletz Lamontagne with such focus that I found myself staring at her, riveted by this trapped soul who wanders around the stage both suffering patiently and still trying to find a way out. Cheswick, played by Rachel Baril, conveys a cheerful goofiness and willingness to throw herself in the fray. Scanlon, played by Eric McGowan, obsesses around his alarm clock, a proxy for a bomb to blow up the world with, but he quickly keys into an interesting conversation about sex. McGowan cleverly and convincingly allows his character to let go of his craziness when there’s something interesting going on.

The assistant Nurse Flinn, played by Sophia Koevary, deftly plays a decent person and clinician in a bizarre situation, and the male aides, played by Doug Dulaney and Edward Churchill, are predictably mean and hate their jobs, and effectively convey their bondage to this larger system. They could be decent folks in another situation.

Doctor Spivey, played by Bob Cornell, convincingly conveys a man with some integrity and good feeling who is overwhelmed by the people and processes around him.

I particularly enjoy the visitors, played by Ruth Fontanella and Michelle Principi, who help us see the bewilderment and awe that these strange institutions bring out in the public.

So what do we do about this mess? People like Nurse Ratched populate our mental hospitals but also our non-profits, our for-profits, our government. Let me state an observation that may help us. When I look at these damaging institutions and destructive people, I note that the damage they can do can be greatly reduced by effective responses to them. I know this sounds simple, but often simple solutions, pursued with intensity and persistence, can work. We need to respond to people and institutions doing bad things. Nurse Ratched’s pernicious effect on the patients and the staff, not to mention the visitors, is powerful because it is not consistently, forcefully, and intelligently opposed. Look at the energy and joy that we and the patients feel in the rare moments when she is effectively countered.

This play gives us a mandate—speak up, push back, assert yourself. Don’t let yourself be tricked into pouring the same poison back on the people who oppress you. Work on opposing them with intelligence and creativity, and not with just a no to their awful teaching but a yes to good teaching, with these perpetrators fully included in the lesson.

One of my favorite forms of opposition is simple helping. For example, we can help people in Billy's situation, right now. If you're not doing it already, look around you, and find some people who have been left to twist and be twisted. Remember that once one is twisted, it takes a lot of patience, love, time and repetition, to get untwisted and stay that way, but people have great reserves of creativity and energy, and they will help you as you reach out to them. Let’s learn from Nurse Ratched’s negative example, and genuinely listen and respond, to make sure the way we help is really helping.