Flying high
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Playhouse Theatre, 31 May - 3 June
It turns out Oxford students are very good at pretending to be mentally ill. The performances in this play are all so easy to mess up. They require utter, unembarrassed conviction and larger balls than Trinity’s stolen globe to carry off. Yet every one in this production is admirably accomplished.
Nicholas Bishop Villero as Randle McMurphy is startlingly good: he is perfectly loud, red-faced, charismatic and vulgar, and though evidently at times channelling Jack Nicholson, he does so enjoyably rather than pathetically. Tom Cartlidge is almost unrecognisable as Chief Bromden, and turns in an enjoyable performance, spending most of his time moping — and mopping — about all pale, haggard and cut. The cast is unlikely to be rivalled this term.
Even titans like Jack Farthing are here — and excellent — in relatively minor roles. Federico Fernandez Garcia-Armesto is fantastically misanthropic as Scanlon. Corinne Sawers is perhaps a little disturbingly childish, but enjoyably voluble and enthused as Candy. Alice Glover could do with being a little more Thatcherish as Ratched but still impresses with her quiet malice. The faked American accents all work. None fall apart at any point, or get embarrassing.
The story is no doubt familiar to us all: doomed members of a psychiatric ward meet jocular, rebellious outsider, a kind of fairy godmother, who finally liberates them all. McMurphy is like Jesus Christ only not quite as good. Impressive effort has gone into this, and immense fun is to be had in watching it.
25th May 2006