Tales About Freedom And Sin

It’s a terrifying place, a mental hospital, even a mental hospital on a stage. The men shuffle or jitter or mope, and one stands Christlike in catatonic ice. The head nurse humiliates them. The attendants bully them. And the fear diminishes them.

   Still, it’s only theater.

   But theater describes what can happen out there. Even to you.

And the worst thing that can happen to anyone is losing power.

     All of it.

     Which is what “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestâ€� is about.

     The play by Dale Wasserman, based on Ken Kesey’s novel, is full of characters: the adolescent Billy (Alex Bennett), who stutters at the mention of his mother; Dale (Jeff DeRocker), who finds protection in this hospital, particularly from his wife; and Chief Bromdem (John Adair), a huge Indian who everyone thought was deaf and dumb until he gets to know the new guy, R.P. McMurphy (Thomas Vernier).

   McMurphy hangs on to his freedom: He wears his own clothes, defies the dreaded Nurse Ratched ( Zsuzsa Manna), and prods his fellows to stand up for themselves. He is brash, funny. And doomed.

     Of course he is not the only character here with a spark of defiance.Dale, before taking his medication, holds up the little paper cup and declares, “For the tranquilizers we are about to receive, we thank you.â€�

   But this is a fleeting gesture — nothing that Nurse Ratched cannot handle with a small smile and a promise of pain, for she has a large arsenal, everything from scorn to a trip to the “shock shop,â€� McMurphy’s name for electroconvulsive therapy. Of course, McMurphy cannot back down. That’s his freedom. And, as many have discovered before him, the push for freedom is a dangerous thing.

   “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestâ€� plays at The Center for Performing

Arts at Rhinebeck through Oct. 17.

For tickets: 845-876-3080.

                                      

In another vein, Aglet Theatre Company
brought four very fine one-act plays to the Bok
Gallery last Saturday, all with a single theme:
aging. The title may have been “Tarnished Gold,�
but the acting and directing was bright and, often,  
funny. Most memorable was Jason Miller’s “It’s a
Sin to Tell a Lie� with Macey Levin and Gail
Ryan as two elderly fabulists waiting in a doctor’s
office. Next on the schedule is Lillian Hellman’s
“Toys in the Attic,� Nov. 6 at the Bok Gallery.
Tickets: 860-435-6928.

                                                             

                                    

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