Reviews!
Well, kiddies, here it is, my first review:
http://www.theatreinlondon.ca/reviews/index_reviews.htm
And my second review:
Cuckoo's Nest a challenge for the stage
Harry Currie. The Record, Kitchener, ON Sep 12, 2005, pB5
Staging an adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is no small task.
I had misgivings at the start of the Almost Absurd Theatre production from St. Thomas which played the Registry theatre in Kitchener this past weekend.
Fortunately, what began as a very slow, static and wordy presentation picked up speed and dramatic tension to become a most compelling and riveting performance.
Adapting a novel for film or television has many advantages. Movement is picked up by camera angles, cutting and travelling, so a sit-down cast can stay sat. The stage isn't so kind, so the beginning of Cuckoo's Nest with a static therapy session and inhibited characters in a mental institution who don't even want to speak is very tricky, and it dragged here.
The pace, and even the style, picked up when new inmate Randall P. McMurphy enters. McMurphy, transferred from a work farm where he was unco-operative and a trouble maker, is there for observation, but Head Nurse Ratched suspects he's just a malingerer using the system to avoid hard work.
The conflict between the two is what drives this play, and in the hands of Shawn Franklin as McMurphy and Janice Blewett-Lang as Ratched, these characters came alive and were true to form from beginning to end.
This desperate psychological battle, McMurphy's determination for the patients' rights and his open sexuality and freedom of spirit against Nurse Ratched's authoritarian, repressive and ultra-conservative views, can only lead to tragedy in a place where authority prevails behind locked doors.
I've always been aware of the similarity between Cuckoo's Nest and Herman Melville's Billy Budd, where handsome, press-ganged seaman Budd has become the hero of the crew, while the cruel Master-at-Arms Claggart is determined to get him one way or another, and the obsession is so great that Claggart is willing to manipulate an intervention by Budd resulting in Claggart's death, and the Master-at-Arms dies knowing that Budd will be hanged for killing a superior officer, even if it was accidental.
In Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Ratched's quiet malevolence and cruelty to other patients eventually provokes McMurphy to the breaking point, leading to a physical attack on her person. Ratched's authority is so feared that even the milquetoast Doctor Spivey (Michael Hirst) doesn't invervene when Ratched permanently commits McMurphy to the mental institute and, after the attack, orders a lobotomy.
The other characters, most of them volunteer inmates afraid of living outside for one reason or another, rise to the spark provided by Franklin and Blewett-Lang: the pretend deaf and dumb Chief Bromden (Timothy Hedden), the insecure, stuttering Billy Bibbitt (Keith King), the patients' president Dale Harding (Rob Pristas), together with Matt Stuart, Sabina Lindeman, Kerry Ruban, Patrick Hessen, Paul Merrifield, and the catatonic Ruckly played by Eugene Swain.
A breath of fresh air sweeps in with the arrival of the tall, very attractive prostitute Candy Starr, played by Jessica Quartel, and her sidekick in the same profession, Sandra (Val Cotic).
There's lots of humour in this play, but the foreboding of the inevitable underscores this and even makes the humour somewhat macabre.
Jim Schaeffer directed.
Well gang, there ya have it. I want to thank some people, cause I do feel like this is a bit of a milestone for me. First off, thanks to my Alicia for standing by me always and encouraging me. And thanks to all my cReW brothers, especially J, Bob and Brian, who always said I could do anything I wanted.
-Shawn
http://www.theatreinlondon.ca/reviews/index_reviews.htm
And my second review:
Cuckoo's Nest a challenge for the stage
Harry Currie. The Record, Kitchener, ON Sep 12, 2005, pB5
Staging an adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is no small task.
I had misgivings at the start of the Almost Absurd Theatre production from St. Thomas which played the Registry theatre in Kitchener this past weekend.
Fortunately, what began as a very slow, static and wordy presentation picked up speed and dramatic tension to become a most compelling and riveting performance.
Adapting a novel for film or television has many advantages. Movement is picked up by camera angles, cutting and travelling, so a sit-down cast can stay sat. The stage isn't so kind, so the beginning of Cuckoo's Nest with a static therapy session and inhibited characters in a mental institution who don't even want to speak is very tricky, and it dragged here.
The pace, and even the style, picked up when new inmate Randall P. McMurphy enters. McMurphy, transferred from a work farm where he was unco-operative and a trouble maker, is there for observation, but Head Nurse Ratched suspects he's just a malingerer using the system to avoid hard work.
The conflict between the two is what drives this play, and in the hands of Shawn Franklin as McMurphy and Janice Blewett-Lang as Ratched, these characters came alive and were true to form from beginning to end.
This desperate psychological battle, McMurphy's determination for the patients' rights and his open sexuality and freedom of spirit against Nurse Ratched's authoritarian, repressive and ultra-conservative views, can only lead to tragedy in a place where authority prevails behind locked doors.
I've always been aware of the similarity between Cuckoo's Nest and Herman Melville's Billy Budd, where handsome, press-ganged seaman Budd has become the hero of the crew, while the cruel Master-at-Arms Claggart is determined to get him one way or another, and the obsession is so great that Claggart is willing to manipulate an intervention by Budd resulting in Claggart's death, and the Master-at-Arms dies knowing that Budd will be hanged for killing a superior officer, even if it was accidental.
In Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Ratched's quiet malevolence and cruelty to other patients eventually provokes McMurphy to the breaking point, leading to a physical attack on her person. Ratched's authority is so feared that even the milquetoast Doctor Spivey (Michael Hirst) doesn't invervene when Ratched permanently commits McMurphy to the mental institute and, after the attack, orders a lobotomy.
The other characters, most of them volunteer inmates afraid of living outside for one reason or another, rise to the spark provided by Franklin and Blewett-Lang: the pretend deaf and dumb Chief Bromden (Timothy Hedden), the insecure, stuttering Billy Bibbitt (Keith King), the patients' president Dale Harding (Rob Pristas), together with Matt Stuart, Sabina Lindeman, Kerry Ruban, Patrick Hessen, Paul Merrifield, and the catatonic Ruckly played by Eugene Swain.
A breath of fresh air sweeps in with the arrival of the tall, very attractive prostitute Candy Starr, played by Jessica Quartel, and her sidekick in the same profession, Sandra (Val Cotic).
There's lots of humour in this play, but the foreboding of the inevitable underscores this and even makes the humour somewhat macabre.
Jim Schaeffer directed.
Well gang, there ya have it. I want to thank some people, cause I do feel like this is a bit of a milestone for me. First off, thanks to my Alicia for standing by me always and encouraging me. And thanks to all my cReW brothers, especially J, Bob and Brian, who always said I could do anything I wanted.
-Shawn