Big Questions: Play examines institutions, gets audience invested

Sunday, April 9, 2006

By Ken Keuffel
JOURNAL REPORTER

Once upon a time, the rules at a certain mental institution were clear. The caregivers had all the power. The patients did not.

Then one day, a sane person named Randle Patrick McMurphy (David Joy) became one of the patients.

Overnight, the once unquestioned balance of power is in question, and McMurphy and Nurse Ratched (Danya Benson) wage a battle for supremacy. So begins Dale Wasserman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which Theatre Alliance is presenting through Saturday in Dunn Auditorium at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.

As the play progresses, disturbing questions emerge. What are mental institutions really about: helping patients or maintaining power over them? To what extent are rules to be questioned, bent or broken? Do patients want to break free of an institution's strictures or simply complain about them? Might caregivers be just as in need of help as the patients?

Director Jamie Lawson's staging - and the large and able cast he has assembled - keeps us focused and makes us care, even if there are no easy answers.

Along the way, we're treated to some excellent individual performances, both large and small. Joy and Benson are among the most memorable. Zack Brown makes an excellent Chief Bromden, speaking little but saying a lot.

The patients will make you laugh, too, but their antics are always flavored with poignancy.
The set - one of the best I've seen from a Theatre Alliance show - captures the feel of an institution.

The over-the-top special effects complement a show with over-the-top action and themes. That means that you can expect flashing strobe lights to accompany lobotomies and plenty of fake blood.

• Theatre Alliance will present One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at 2 p.m. today and at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday in Dunn Auditorium at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. For more information, call 768-5655.