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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

Cardinal Stage Company performs 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" will be played at from Feb. 12 - 28 at Ivy Tech Waldron Auditorium. The play is based on Ken Kesey's novel.

Audience members willingly checked themselves into a 1960’s mental hospital Friday evening. They entered through a gated doorway, into a set complete with tile floors, barred and locked windows and an overlooking glassed-in nurses station.

For the next several hours, they experienced Dale Wasserman’s stage adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” put on by the Cardinal Stage Company.

“From the moment they walk through the door, they’re locked in here with us, with these mentally ill people,” said IU senior Ian McCabe, who plays Billy Bibbitt. “They get to be a part of this.”

McCabe’s character is one of the acutes, the group of inpatients who have a chance of being cured of their conditions. The story focuses on the acutes, led by Randall McMurphy, in their struggle against the system, embodied by Nurse Ratched.

Billy Bibbitt, along with the other acutes, often gets caught between the forces of McMurphy and Ratched, McCabe said. While this tension creates many heavy, sad moments in the play, he said there are also some points of hope.

“It’s this gang of misfit toys, these guys who didn’t fit in for one reason or another and didn’t work in society,” McCabe said. “They’re brought together by this one person to be a team and to have their moment in time. At the beginning of the story, you see them and you think these people could never have a cohesive moment of success and triumph, and then you get to see that more than once in the play. These people surpass and surmount their troubles.”

The characters are developed more in the play than in the book, McCabe said. The side characters come to life, and more of their humanity is shown in the stage adaptation.

The book, which is more of a stream of consciousness symbolic of anti-establishment thinking, is made more linear and easy to follow in the play, McCabe said.

“It’s a wonderful stage adaptation of a very important piece of American literature,” McCabe said. “And it’s exciting, it’s funny. As heavy as it is, as sad as it can be, as dark as it gets, it is funny. There are moments of absolute hilarity, and it’s a comedy that college students can gravitate to because it’s a little dark and edgy.”

Mike McGregor, a professor in the Media School who plays Aide Turkel, said the play closely follows the book, but the differences make it that much more interesting.

The play is a look into history as it portrays what mental institutions were like in the 1960’s, McGregor said, but what makes it truly compelling is the talented cast that brings it to life.

“It’s funny, and it’s disturbing, and it’s heartbreaking within seconds,” McGregor said. “It’s not often you see a show that can pull those kind of emotions so quickly. “

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