One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Preview Part 2

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is showing Thursday 11^th – Saturday 13^th every evening at the UEA Drama Studio. The price for admission is £4.00 for UEA students. Tickets can be purchased online here.

Jack Carmichael is a third year English Literature and Drama student. He is joined in directing the play with Rob Ellis who is a third year scriptwriting and performance student. This is the first major production for both of them where they will be sat in the director’s chair.

Isobel Daws is a third year English Literature and Drama student playing the infamous Nurse Ratched.

Jonathan Moss is a second year drama student playing the part of R. P. McMurphy.

We culture editors here at The Tab love a bit of theatre, especially theatre performed by our fellow UEA students, so we took the time to sit down with four of them to discuss the Drama Studio’s latest production which is based on Ken Kesey’s famous novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest as adapted for the stage by David Wasserman. Here’s what else they had to say in part two of our interview:

Victoria: Let’s talk about the portrayal of the patients in the hospital. Jonathan’s playing McMurphy. Obviously, many of the characters in ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ are struggling with a mental illness. Did you and the rest of the cast have any difficulty trying to portray mental illness? As in the book and film it’s shown in a lot of different variations.

Jonathan: I think, well, for McMurphy, anyway, it feels to me like the tragedy of the play comes out all the more human, the more sane, the more of a real person he is. I think if you start to play it as ‘I’m a crazy man!’ then you lose the genuine human nature that the character has and that takes away from the depth that you can get. So yeah certainly from McMurphy’s point of view, I think it’s sensible to keep him as human as possible, as sane as possible.

Rob: I think that’s pretty much fair to say of all the patients that we’ve focused on. We didn’t want to portray them as psychiatric patients. We wanted to portray them as people with problems. Because it’s a voluntary ward, they’ve taken themselves to the ward because they’ve got problems, so we wanted to steer away from the fact that they’re ‘insane’.

The ward as it is has been designed for the stage.

Isobel: It’s so interesting how when you get into a mindset of being on a psychiatric ward how even when sometimes I’ll come on stage and not realise that we aren’t doing a scene and I’ll see someone sitting there who might just be daydreaming and I won’t realise that we’re not acting. As soon as you get into that mindset anything can start to look a bit peculiar. So it’s really not necessary to ham it up. Moose [Jonathan] does it so well because he’s sincere but because he’s quite a boisterous personality anything can seem a little bit like ‘oh did he do that because he’s a bit mental or –

Jonathan: Yeah, I think that is the challenge with McMurphy, because he is such a big character, because he wants to be the top man in every situation. In order to keep him sane it’s a fine line to tread between him being a crazy man and him just wanting to be the top dog, as it were.

The bed upon which McMurphy receives electroshock treatment.

Alex: What sort of things did you do to prepare for trying to create a psychiatric ward on stage?

Jack: We thought maybe the Cuckoo’s Nest as a show would be a good one to propose when I watched a film at home around last year called It’s Kind of a Funny Story which wasn’t great but it went for the same sort of angles of people with problems rather than psychiatric patients and because the play hasn’t had a major production since 2001. We’re all one big company, so we’ve had people chipping in ideas from everywhere, one of our graduates sent us a documentary film that the cast members of the film had watched before we went into it, so we made sure we watched that.

Isobel: It was so good. It was about the brutality of the treatment of patients. It was called Titicut Follies. It was just fantastic. It was eye opening because it was not hammed-up in a Hollywood way. It was very real and gritty. I watched it at six o’clock in the morning one day when I just woke up and it  haunted me for the next couple of days. I was trying to find genuine qualities I would need as a nurse, so I looked up various things like what you would have to have now to be a mental health nurse. I went on the NHS website and it was so interesting the things they want from you and the mindset that you have to have which is control and the want to keep things going smoothly and to be willing to take on that responsibility.

Another image of the hospital ward.

Victoria: Rob and Jack- is this your first time directing a major production?

Rob: A major production, yes.

Victoria: And have you enjoyed it?

Jack: I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. I definitely want to do it again in some capacity, whether it’s at the university or not. Yeah, it’s been a joy.

Victoria: So why should UEA students come to see One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

Jack: I think the characters. If you enjoy watching interesting characters its one of the most idealised performances you can come and see because there’s such an immense depth to these characters.

Isobel: It’s so entertaining. It’s just so entertaining. I assure you no matter who you look at on stage, you will be entertained.

Jack: Each one of them is unique in their own way.

Rob: Heart-warming and heartbreaking.

Jack: This is why we were drawn to the play initially because we decided that the standard of acting within Minotaur at this moment, it was right to try this production.

Rob: When you look at the people in the company, you realise they have the capabilities to put this show on.