New Haven Theater Company Goes Cuckoo

Preview, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, New Haven Theater Company

If you’re a regular at New Haven Theater Company shows, you might remember the time the company built what looked to be a functional luncheonette in their theater space in the back of English Building Markets. That was George Kulp’s set for William Inge’s Bus Stop, which he directed. Last year, there was the set for Neil Simon’s Rumors that turned the space into a two-story living room with numerous doors to slam. That was Kulp’s too.

Beginning this Thursday and running for the next three weekends, the space will be the dayroom at a mental hospital where a host of inmates live placid lives under the purview of a controlling nurse as Kulp directs NHTC’s next offering, Dale Wasserman’s stage adaptation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kulp, who says this is “the most ambitious and challenging” play he’s directed yet, seems to like plays with a lot of characters and a very focused set.

If you were around in the 1970s, you no doubt remember the film version of the novel, directed by Milos Forman, which won Oscars for picture, director, actress (Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched), and actor (Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy), and adapted screenplay. Indeed, the role of McMurphy was easily the most famous of Nicholson’s impressive career—until he took an ax to a bathroom door in The Shining.

McMurphy is a boisterous ne’er-do-well who considers a stint in a mental hospital preferable to prison. His fellow inmates are an odd assortments of “lifers” who prefer the hospital to trying to get along in the outside world. And Nurse Ratched is there to make sure everything runs the way she likes. The confrontations between McMurphy and the nurse become a battleground over the quality of life. In the film, you just have to root for McMurphy as Fletcher’s version of the nurse is so inhumanly impersonal.

Kulp is wary of expectations derived from the film. First of all, the film was adapted from the novel, not from Wasserman’s play. And, while the drama’s trajectory runs much the same, the filmed versions of certain characters sometimes aimed for comic caricature. Kulp stresses that his cast is “very careful” to avoid that pitfall, and that means creating useful backstories for the characters to give them fuller dimension. Which might be a way of saying that Kulp is urging them to put some method in the madness.

McMurphy will be played by Trevor Williams who directed NHTC’s previous offering, Marjorie Prime. Williams acted under Kulp’s direction as the naive cowboy, Bo Decker, in Bus Stop and was one of the two hitman in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter last season, directed by John Watson. McMurphy’s nemesis, the maternal Nurse Ratched, will be played by Suzanne Powers, who worked with Kulp in Rumors.

Other NHTC members on hand include John Watson as Dr. Spivey, who tends to back the authoritarian nurse; Erich Greene, the other hitman in Dumb Waiter, as Cheswick, an anxious patient; and J. Kevin Smith, the obstreperous neighbor in Rumors and the boozing professor in Bus Stop, as Harding, the patient with the most self-control.

That leaves many parts featuring actors who will be appearing in a NHTC production for the first time, though, in most cases, Kulp has worked with each before. They include: Al Bhatt, Tristan Bird, Ralph Buonocore (who appeared in NHTC’s Urinetown), Robert Halliwell, Ash Lago, Empress Makeda, Joseph Mallon, Jodi Rabinowitz, John Strano, and Aaron Volain.

For Kulp, much of the challenge, with so many characters “and so much going on”—including a basketball game—is to keep the play “moving at the right pace.” His approach, he said, is to tell his actors “to go for the moon and then pull back.” The casting is key and his previous experiences with the cast make for a lot of trust.

The play was chosen in part because of its name recognition, its diverse cast, and because, Kulp said, it’s “an entertaining and timely story to tell.” He suggested that the issue of how our society treats mental illness and the play’s convincing sense of “the misuse of authority” are meaningful in our time, as they were when the novel was published in 1963 and when the film version was released in 1975, both key works of the Vietnam era of American culture.

Is it “cuckoo” to place such a largescale play in the New Haven Theater Company’s intimate space? Get your tickets and find out (the play is running for three weekends rather than two because seating is limited).

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
By Dale Wasserman, from the novel by Ken Kesey
Directed by George Kulp
New Haven Theater Company
April 25-27, May 2-4, May 9-11

For tickets and info, go here

See my review here

Leaving the Nest

Review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Playhouse on Park

Randle Patrick McMurphy is a famed character—from Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) to the play Dale Wasserman made from the novel a year later, to the film by Miloš Forman, using Bo Goldman’s screenplay, the role for which Jack Nicholson won a Best Actor Oscar in 1975. Kesey and Wasserman were free spirits, anti-authoritarian, extra-institutional, and they fashioned McMurphy to be a protean Everyman type—boisterous, crude, full of the life principle. He’s a charmer and not nearly as clever as he’d like to be, naïve in ways that prove to be his Achilles’ heel.

It’s as if we’ve always known McMurphy and have never stopped wishing him well. But, these days, a certain tangled air encircles him. The life principle, as conceived in the book-play-film, is decidedly male, and it’s set against the ball-busting, castrating, emasculating power wielded by a society that—in the name of motherhood, religion, manners, and being nice—suppresses the raw “barbaric yawp” that American heroes so often sound. These days, politesse is all but dead, and many forms of misogyny, some subtle and some overt, have been hash-tagged if not debagged. Cuckoo’s Nest, now, could even seem a “backlash,” or at least a cautionary tale about how badly “real men” fare beneath the thumb of a culture determined to outlaw their badass antics.

Randle Patrick McMurphy (Wayne Willinger) and Nurse Ratched (Patricia Randell), foreground; Dale Harding (Adam Kee), Ruckley (Ben McLauglin), background; in Playhouse on Park’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (photos by Curt Henderson)

If you don’t know the story: there is an asylum where a group of male inmates live out their days medicated and playing cards and watching TV and taking recreation according to a prescribed schedule. Many elements of life in the common space are by agreement, ostensibly, but all is overseen by Nurse Ratched, a figure of authority who treats the patients as children trying to get away with something. They can’t be trusted and they don’t trust themselves, since most suffer from extreme social anxieties. One or two “chronic” patients are too debilitated to take part in common functions, most notably “The Chief,” a very large Native American who appears to be catatonic, but in fact is a source of stream-of-consciousness commentary about the ward.

Into this world of settled routine comes McMurphy, a repeat-offender sent over from prison for an intervention into his violent and anti-social tendencies. To him, the asylum beats lock-up and he’s soon engaging the inmates in card games and wagers to leech their government checks away. He is an unregenerate hustler and the anathema of Nurse Ratched who resents how easily McMurphy’s charm sways her patients and even Dr. Spivey, the doctor assigned to the ward who previously agreed with her if only to avoid confrontation.

As revived at Playhouse on Park, directed by Ezra Barnes, whose The Diary of Anne Frank there was a notable success last season, Cuckoo’s Nest takes too long to click and never soars. The play picks up momentum as it goes, with the first half weighed down with the task of introducing characters and the elements of life in the asylum. The second half comes more fully into its own as the camaraderie among the inmates of the asylum catches fire and makes their interplay more interesting, while the battle of wills between Ratched and McMurphy becomes more pronounced.

The principle characters are particularly well cast. As McMurphy, Wayne Willinger has plenty of swagger and charm, and busy eyebrows reminiscent of Nicholson. Willinger never lets us forget—for all the heroizing of his fellow inmates—that McMurphy is just an average guy, mostly flying by the seat of his pants. His main delight is going against the rules simply because they are rules. The others, against whatever comfort they find in routine, eventually start to see his point, but it does take a while. The Act One closer is the first breath of fresh air: a collectively imagined baseball game on a shut-off TV.

As Big Nurse Ratched, Patricia Randell is perfect. Randell looks a motherly figure and acts like a school principal: no-nonsense, and convinced of the value of the particular brand of socialization she wields. Her “all right, boys,” at one point, risks a certain devilry. We might suspect that, in other circumstances, she might be a bit more indulgent toward McMurphy, but his cock-of-the-walk routine has to be squelched. Of course, there will be violence and a sacrificial victim.

Santos, in the role of Chief Bromden, plays up the outward debility of the character. The Chief, for all his size and latent power, sees himself as dwarfed by the system that has robbed his tribe of all status and respect. His voice carries a gravitas that does much for the allegory Kesey and Wasserman intended. This isn’t ever meant to be simply a therapeutic institution but rather a metaphor for how we self-medicate ourselves into complacency for the sake of a quiet life without complications. All the inmates are afraid of life “out there,” and all but a few, including the Chief and McMurphy, are free to leave if they wish. But they don’t.

Dale Harding (Adam Kee), Frank Scanlon (John Ramaine), Candy Starr (Athena Reddy), Billy Bibbitt (Alex Rafala), Randle Patrick McMurphy (Wayne Willinger)

Part of the problem here is with the patients. They risk becoming tics of behavioral oddity, and to make them characters would take more time than the play can afford. The neuroses from which they suffer fall away rather quickly and some—most notably Harding (Adam Kee)—seem perfectly fine from the start. The era when one sought out psychiatric—or medical—intervention for homosexuality is, thankfully, long gone, our current vice president notwithstanding. Wasserman, who died in 2008 at 94, unfortunately never updated the play for the twenty-first century.

Barnes uses the playing space well, with the action moving around the set convincingly, including circled discussions, card games, fights, a party, and an improvised basketball game. The use of see-through walls in David Lewis’ set works very well and suggests how porous this asylum is. Lighting, which the script can be very definite about, is used to good effect by Aaron Hochheiser.

Whatever the intentions of the revival, the play comes across as a period piece, a fight for the souls of males of the Vietnam era. However, the climax—with the Chief’s big moment—takes on more potency today as a gesture against the white man’s world and its clinical devaluation of persons of color. In that, the play is of its time but also ahead of its time.

Chief Bromden (Santos)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
By Dale Wasserman
Based on the novel by Ken Kesey
Directed by Ezra Barnes

Scenic Designer: David Lewis; Costume Designer: Michele Sansone; Lighting Designer: Aaron Hochheiser; Original Music & Sound Designer: Lucas Clopton; Stage Manager: Mollie Cook; Properties & Set Dressing: Eileen OConnor; E. John McGarvey for Les Cheveux Salon

Cast: Katya Collazo; Andrew R. Cooksey, Jr.; Harrison Greene; Justin Henry; Adam Kee; Rick Malone; Ben McLaughlin; Alex Rafala; John Ramaine; Patricia Randell; Athena Reddy; Santos; David Sirois; Lance Williams; Wayne Willinger

Playhouse on Park
October 31-November 18, 2018

A Hero of Our Time

Review of Man of La Mancha, Westport Country Playhouse

A revival of a popular crowd-pleaser has to make you wonder: is it to have on the schedule something everyone knows and loves, or is it to make a difference with a well-known war horse? The Westport Country Playhouse’s Man of La Mancha, directed by Mark Lamos, is having it both ways. It’s packing them in, as the saying goes, but it’s also spinning the show with an eye to our times.

Take that opening. Sure, the show always begins with Miguel de Cervantes (Philip Hernandez), the author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, arriving at a prison that houses those who have run afoul of the agents of the Inquisition. That historical fact of Christianity, once persecuted and oppressed, become persecutor and oppressor is key to the setting, the background to Cervantes’ flights of fancy and the madness of his knight-errant. Here, Cervantes is escorted by officers who look like they work for ICE. And those bars at the edge of the stage remain in place until the dramatic shift into Cervantes’ tale. When the bars return, if they don’t make you think of a concentration camp and those cages for the children of immigrants, then you must be as great a fantasist as Don Alonso Quixano, the man whose imagination creates the world of Don Quixote.

Don Quixote (Philip Hernandez) and the cast of Westport Country Playhouse’s production of Man of La Mancha (photos by Carol Rosegg)

The story, following Quixote’s adventures, tends to be tongue-in-cheek, as those he encounters know he’s mad, but find a certain amusement in humoring him. None sets that tone better than Michael Mendez, who plays the Innkeeper who is willing to dub Quixote a knight. Others, such as Aldonza (Gisela Adisa), a prostitute and serving girl, find playing along too strange, at least at first. Meanwhile, Quixano’s sister Antonia (Paola Hernandez) and his housekeeper (Lulu Picart) want him to come to his senses before something bad happens to his fortune—as they make clear in the witty number “We’re Only Thinking of Him.”

Housekeeper (Lulu Picart), Padre (Carlos Encinas), Antonia (Paola Hernandez)

Gauging the point at which cynicism enters into the indulgence of Quixano/Quixote has always been part of the paradoxical story: we know Quixote’s vision is foolish but we indulge it because it’s more interesting than reality. But, here, when Quixote thunders that “facts get in the way of the truth” and nods at the audience’s reaction, we can begin to wonder why we are so willing to indulge a fantasist who believes that a gold-colored shaving dish is a helmet of real gold or that a prostitute is an elegant lady. In other words, this version of Man of La Mancha gets closer to Cervantes’ novel than, I expect, many a production of the musical ever has. And that aligns it well with our time in which—call it what you like—a sow’s ear remains a sow’s ear.

Don Quixote (Philip Hernandez)

Granted, when the show won all those Tonys back in 1965, “The Impossible Dream,”—the show-stopping song that became ubiquitous in that period—might give backbone to a “glorious quest” to “march into hell” for the “heavenly cause” of stopping the spread of communism in southeast Asia. Once one entertains that notion, it’s easy to see how vainglorious are Don Quixote’s noble dreams.

And if that point needs more punch, there’s the rape of Aldonza by a pack of muleteers that Quixote and his friends—Aldonza and the ever-loyal Sancho Panza (Tony Manna)—had earlier dispatched in quite a busy fight scene (Michael Rossmy, fight director and intimacy coach). Quixote, foolishly, lets Aldonza “minister” to his fallen enemies. The rape, which Lamos handles as tastefully as one can, becomes uncomfortable sooner in the #MeToo era, particularly after the unsavory accusations that have been leveled at the most recent Republican Supreme Court nominee. To watch the scene was always to think about what it says about the nature of the reality Aldonza lives (despite Quixote’s romantic fantasy), but now it must make one think about the reality that even well-born and educated and successful women face, in all walks of life.

Certainly, when this show was decided on to fill this slot in Westport’s season, no one could know that Brett Kavanagh would be in the hotseat as the show opened, but it’s where we are now. Made all the more telling by that huge mirrored shield enacting Hamlet’s idea of the purpose of playing.

Aldonza (Gisela Adisa) and the cast of Westport Country Playhouse’s production of Man of La Mancha

As far as crowd-pleasing aspects of the show: start with the evocative stage design by Wilson Chin, which broods enough for a prison but has elements of sanctity as well, with that cathedral-like clerestory. Fabian Fidel Aguilar’s costumes are sumptuous when needed—such as the cape and armor of Quixote’s get-up or the threads that drape Antonia—and feature a range of homespun ensembles, and on Lulu Picart exciting color combos. As Aldonza, Gisela Adisa is perfectly outfitted, and she’s a tour de force of reactions and glances aside. Her movement and singing put much of the fire into the show, with “What Does He Want of Me” a high point in Act 1.

As our hero—a chastened Cervantes, a doddering Quixano, and, especially, a fully assertive Quixote—Philip Hernandez is perfect. He looks the part, tall and a little craggy, and he gives “The Impossible Dream” all the gusto it requires, letting the audience exult in its inspiring uplift. He’s abetted by Tony Manna’s Sancho, who shines best when we can see the wily peasant only too eager to serve whatever pays. He’s a little flat at times, not quite the colorful bon vivant one expects.

Sancho Panza (Tony Manna), Don Quixote (Philip Hernandez), Aldonza (Gisela Adisa)

The rest of the cast play a number of roles, as prisoners and as the persons in Quixote’s story. Particular mention goes to Esteban Suero’s great turn as the Barber (I wanted more of him!), Mendez’s canny Innkeeper, and Ceasar F. Barajas (Pedro) and Ian Paget (Anselmo), the prisoners/muleteers who lead “Little Bird,” and much of the action, which is eye-catching and well-choreographed throughout.

In the end, the “impossible dream” is likely what it always was: a glimmer of hope for those who are trying to make a sad reality better and more bearable. And while Mark Lamos’ Man of La Mancha perhaps needs a little more stirring to become the wonderful dish it could be, all the ingredients are there. And that’s no fantasy.

Man of La Mancha
Written by Dale Wasserman
Music by Mitch Leigh, Lyrics by Joe Darion
Directed by Mark Lamos

Scenic Design: Wilson Chin; Costume Design: Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Design: Alan C. Edwards; Sound Design: Domonic Sack; Musical Staging: Marcos Santana & Mark Lamos; Choreographer: Marcos Santana; Music Director: Andrew David Sotomayor; Music Supervisor: Wayne Baker; Fight Director/Intimacy Coach: Michael Rossmy; Props Master: Samantha Shoffner; Production Stage Manager: Ryan Gohsman

Cast: Gisela Adisa, Ceasar F. Barajas, Carlos Encinias, Michael Scott Gomez, Philip Hernandez, Paola Hernandez, Tony Manna, Michael Mendez, Ian Paget, Lulu Picart, Jermaine Rowe, David Sattler, Clay Singer, Esteban Suero

Musicians: Ben Clymer, trombone; Nicholas DiFabbio, guitar; Daniel Louis Duncan, trumpet; Simon Hutchings, reeds; Joseph Russo, string bass; Marshall Sealy, French horn; Arei Sekiguchi, percussion

Westport Country Playhouse
September 25-October 13, 2018

Man of Imagination

Review of Man of La Mancha, Ivoryton Playhouse

As musicals go, the reworking of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic tale of the adventures of Don Quixote, otherwise simply Alonso Quijana of La Mancha, is pretty powerful stuff. Written by Dale Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion, Man of La Mancha is probably best known as the source of the rousing standard “The Impossible Dream” (which I remember being covered on variety shows often in my youth), but it also uses an intriguing play-within-a-play format to establish that Quixote is not only the fantasy life of Quijana but also the alter-ego of his author Cervantes.

Imprisoned by the Inquisition, Cervantes (David Pittsinger) is placed at the mercy of his fellow prisoners and pleads with them to hear his story about Quixote, which he then enacts for them while also pressing them into service as other characters in the tale. It’s a great theatrical idea and makes for involving storytelling as we move between the frame in the dungeon and the roadway and inn and other settings of Quixote’s story.

At Ivoryton, Daniel Nischan’s set places a huge platform in the center of the stage that makes for a somewhat shallow playing space stage front. While the higher space is used to good effect now and then, the area might have afforded more freedom of movement; at times Todd Underwood’s choreography feels a bit constrained and lacking in fluidity. But no matter, such is Cervantes’ imagination he could stage Quixote’s adventures anywhere. Props and costume changes here help greatly, as does Marcus Abbott’s lighting design.

Aldonza (Talia Thiesfield), Don Quixote (David Pittsinger), Sancho Panza (Brian Michael Hoffman) (photo: Anne Hudson)

As Cervantes/Quixote, Pittsinger has a rich baritone that is a pleasure to hear in songs like “Man of La Mancha,” “Dulcinea,” and, of course, the great crowd-pleaser “The Impossible Dream.” He’s quite adept at suggesting the failing strength of the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, while also playing the thoughtful showman Cervantes who wants all his listeners to be touched by Quixote’s dream. As his manservant who doubles as Quixote’s faithful Sancho Panza, Brian Michael Hoffman has the requisite easygoing manner, with his rendition of “A Little Gossip” at his master’s sickbed his high point. Other fine support is provided by David Edwards as a skeptical prisoner and as scheming Dr. Carrasco, and by Matthew Krob’s fine singing voice in the Padre’s touching “To Each his Dulcinea.”

A match for Pittsinger’s pure, noble and dreamy Quixote is Talia Thiesfield’s sharp, direct, and earthy Aldonza, with lithe movements and a voice that thrills. Dulcinea’s status as fantasy figure for Quixote and Cervantes both makes her seem a kind of ideal damsel brought out by the musical itself, so that Aldonza seems to accept her status as Dulcinea both in the Quixote story and in the dungeon as well. The abduction/rape scene, which is an act of brutality that’s meant to give the lie to Quixote’s unworkable dream, is handled here more as suggestion than outright violence, but, even so, Quixote’s reprise of “The Impossible Dream” immediately after still feels a willful blindness to harsh reality.

The show ends ambiguously both for Quixote and Cervantes, and yet with the sense that Cervantes has redeemed himself by letting Quixote’s madness—almost “cured” by Dr. Carrasco as the Knight of the Mirrors—still reign on, as it must so long as audiences thrill to the notion of a hopeless quest for an unreachable star.

Bravo to Ivoryton for reviving this timeless tale of art’s triumph over sordid reality.

Man of La Mancha
By Dale Wasserman
Music by Mitch Leigh, Lyrics by Joe Darion
Directed by David Edwards
Musical Director: Paul Feyer
Choreography by Todd Underwood

Scenic Designer: Daniel Nischan; Costume/Hair/Wig Designer: Elizabeth Cipollina; Lighting Designer: Marcus Abbott; Production Stage Manager: James Joseph Clark; Sound Designer: Tate R. Burmeiser

Cast: Brian Binion, Amy Buckley, Ryan Cavanaugh, David Edwards, Brian Michael Hoffman, AJ Hunsucker, Matthew Krob, James Ludlum, Conor McGiffin, Melissa McLean, Stephen Mir, David Pittsinger, Talia Thiesfield, James Van Treuren

Ivoryton Playhouse
September 7-October 2, 2016