READER, hasten to Friars’ Gate, Kilmallock for Torch Player’s terrific production of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, stage text by Dale Wasserman. Taking place for one night only, this Thursday March 5 at 8pm, director Maurice O’Sullivan has pulled together an able, intuitive ensemble who deliver, deliver and deliver again in this tough staging of Ken Kesey’s book.
According to Torch Players’ PRO (and actress, and prop provider) Katie Dowling, “This classic play takes us inside the walls of a state mental hospital in America during the 1960s. For most of the patients, sanity means conformity and following rules is just part of their daily routine.
“McMurphy, a charming, boisterous rogue who contrives spending a short sentence in a mental institution rather than jail. But, will it backfire when McMurphy meets the antagonising Nurse Ratched?”
The excellent cast includes Micheál Ó Dubhghaill (McMurphy), Edel Heaney (Nurse Ratched), John Finn (Chief Bromden), Dan Mooney (Dale Harding). Other members include Stuart Mackey, Derek Kennedy, Pat Kelly, Tim Cusack, Colm Casey, Michael Whelan, Sheenagh Murphy, Joanne O Brien and Katie Dowling.
Back to a review synopsis by Rose Rushe, Arts page here at Limerick Post who saw the show at No. 69 O’Connell Street: “It’s odd, how electric the writing and acting is. The best laughs, and there are many, are for lines rank with misogyny in this aerial view of life in the day room of a psychiatric institution. ‘Tis all about power play and the tools to exercise same in novelist Ken Kesey’s big riotous shout against The Machine.
“The stage version is slimmed down but powerful”.
“O’Sullivan makes full play with his pack of cards/ actors who shuffle the stage’s choreography so well. Mícheál Ó Dubhghaill brings first rate mania and timing to his central take on the bould Randle McMurphy – but everybody is good. Edel Heaney is tensile steel as Nurse Ratched and John Finn makes humane and desperately sad the catatonic Chief Bromden, who read the map of this world long before anyone”.
One night only in Kilmallock this Thursday 5 at 8pm. tel. 063-98727.
