Old Vic's Cuckoo's Nest Revival: A Mesmerising Yet Problematic Reimagining
Clint Dyer's new production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Old Vic theatre in London boldly reframes Ken Kesey's 1962 novel, infusing it with a sharp political focus. However, while Aaron Pierre delivers a mesmerising performance as Randle P McMurphy, the relentless misogyny of the original text feels retrograde and undermines the director's radical intentions.
A Storming Performance from Aaron Pierre
As McMurphy, Aaron Pierre brings a dynamic energy to the stage, his portrayal marked by a pumped-up strut and moments of incongruous dainty scampering. He roams the psychiatric hospital setting with a commanding presence, offering fraternal hugs to fellow patients while revealing a frantic vulnerability beneath his booming laugh. Pierre's performance crackles with anarchic spirit, immediately locking horns with Olivia Williams's authoritarian Nurse Ratched.
Williams, who stepped into the role late in rehearsals, embodies Ratched with a ramrod spine and a starched smile. She personifies a system of coercion and control, her authority growing increasingly vicious as the narrative unfolds. Despite being nominally subordinate to a shambolic doctor played by Matthew Steer, there is little check to her abusive power, highlighting the play's critique of institutionalised cruelty.
Fresh Political Edge with Predominantly Black Cast
Director Clint Dyer, known for his devastating 2022 production of Othello, casts the inmates of the psychiatric hospital with predominantly Black actors. This decision gives Kesey's tale a new political edge, framing the characters as pawns in a system designed to disempower marginalised groups. Each time Ratched addresses the men as "boys," it carries an implicit sneer, adding layers of racial tension to the story.
However, race is largely unmentioned in the text, except for Chief Bromden, played by Arthur Boan. As the sole survivor of an Indigenous tribe and a selective mute, Bromden channels the anguish of industrialised psychiatry. Dyer bookends the production by invoking Congo Square in New Orleans, a historic site of celebration and resistance for Black and Indigenous people, aiming to view the play's cruelties through their eyes.
Struggles with Misogyny and Male Gaze
Despite these innovative touches, the production grapples with the relentless misogyny inherent in both Kesey's novel and Dale Wasserman's 1963 adaptation. McMurphy's proclamation, "I fight and fuck," shades into a reclaiming of alpha male individualism, while patient backstories often involve stifling mothers or dissatisfied wives. The regime's coercion is personified as female through Nurse Ratched, making Dyer's reading feel at once radical and retrograde.
The strong ensemble, led by Giles Terera as the refined Dale Harding, creates an unobtrusive patina of tics and deflections, navigating flurries of distress and delirium. Ben Stones's design features a tight circular floor with white and pond-green tiles, while the Old Vic's high ceiling adds an aspirational pull, symbolising a yearning to elevate up and away from confinement.
Visual and Thematic Intensity
Chris Davey's livid lighting, flaring scarlet and blue, emphasises the institutionalised cruelties of the setting. Medication is portrayed as pacifying, group therapy becomes licensed snitching or bullying, and electroconvulsive therapy is depicted as an excruciating ritual. Watching in the round, the audience becomes a ring of often appalled observers, immersed in the play's intense atmosphere.
Kesey's personal experiences, including his time as a guinea pig in government LSD studies and his cross-country travels with the Merry Pranksters, inform the countercultural spirit of the work. Championed by the anti-psychiatry movement, the novel's themes of disempowerment and resistance resonate strongly in this production, even as it struggles to transcend its dated gender politics.
This stirring take on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest runs at the Old Vic theatre in London until 23 May, offering a thought-provoking but flawed exploration of power, race, and gender in a confined space.
