ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
Still, this is a fable set not in a symbolic microcosm but in a specific state mental hospital in the northwest, as seen by Chief Bromden, the last of his tribe and the Ishmael who escapes to tell the story of the revolution McMurphy initiates. The drugged-up inmate/patients, rabbits to be exploited by Nurse Ratched, include the acerbic Harding, who’s terrified of his wife and unsure of his sexuality; Scanlon, who sees bombs everywhere (not so crazy during the Cold War or today); lobotomized Ruckly, who becomes the show’s most useful prop; and Martini, who hallucinates better stuff than what’s really going on around him. Sadistically exploiting their pain, Ratched turns group-therapy sessions into blame-the-victim parties. To keep them cowed, she resorts to a vast menu of coercive manipulation, inflicting on them everything from Lawrence Welk records to restraints to electroshock to lobotomies. (Ratched would have made a great Chicago cop.)
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If there’s more to McMurphy than brashness and petulance, you can’t tell from Laurence Bryan’s uncharismatic performance. Like many here, Bryan goes for the obvious, leaving nothing to be uncovered later. Shouting isn’t enough; this role takes thinking too.
