Solid acting and a clever set design propels ‘One Flew'

Theater

Friday, May 15, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo In the front, Tom Wines plays Chief Bromden in the Twin Beach Players' production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." In the back row are Bess Wilkins as Nurse Ratched, Gary Adamsen as Dale Harding and Luke Woods as McMurphy. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Holland Point Civic Center is not the most glamorous venue for a play.

Here, outside the main drag in North Beach, the stone parking lot fills up fast. Overflow traffic can find a spot in the grass. The actors and audience share the one-room building, and our half only has a few rows of fold-up chairs.

No stage, and not a whole lot of advantages … you would think.

But, then, who knew the civic center's white walls and floors would provide such perfectly sterile environs for a play set in an Oregon insane asylum in the 1960s?

Who knew Calvert County's Twin Beach Players would turn Dale Wasserman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" into one of Southern Maryland's best plays of the year? (It's a shame, really, that this play only lives for two weeks.)

The intermission snack bar doubles as the office where Nurse Ratched (Bess Wilkins) and her assistant, Nurse Flinn (Leslie McDonald), dispense their medicine. The small window on the back wall is where rebel Randle Patrick McMurphy (Luke Woods) sneaks in his prostitute girlfriends for the big party and where Chief Bromden (Tom Wines) looks out and sees the geese: one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Wasserman's play was first produced in 1963, one year after the release of Ken Kesey's classic novel. Kesey, the leader of the Merry Pranksters and author as well of "Sometimes a Great Notion," based his novel depicting the then-primitive state of psychology on his experience as an orderly at an asylum. While there, he talked to patients and took LSD for research trials. The movie starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphy — the first to win all five major Academy Awards — came out in 1975.

The Twin Beach Players' pre-play promotion pushed the participation of Broadway actor Gary Adamsen, a friend of director Sid Curl. Adamsen aptly plays the effeminate intellectual Dale Harding, the leader of the patients before McMurphy's arrival, and in the brochure one will see a star beside his name.

The story of this production, though, is that the 16 other members of the cast deserve stars by their names as well.

Wines' acting is convincing, but he also has the size to portray Chief Bromden, a rather formidable American Indian whose schizophrenia leads him to believe he's dwarfish. Chief pretends to be deaf and dumb for most of the play, and then steps in the spotlight between scenes to deliver monologues referring to the asylum as "the combine," tapping into the work's underlying counterculture era protest against the power structures exacting conformity through subtle yet powerful coercion.

Wines, no doubt, does his job here, but I have to take issue with the script in this instance, as it seems to defy a good novelist's wish to show rather than tell. Beyond that, there seemed no reason to rip our hearts open any wider than they already were.

Actors performing other patients are equally convincing. Danny Beach stutters effortlessly as Billy Bibbit. Producer Kevin McAndrews and Kim Hart deliver relentlessly physical performances as Martini and Charles Cheswick.

The list truly goes on: Long-haired Steve Vesperman is haunting yet hilarious as Ruckly, the victim of a botched lobotomy. Patrick McPartlin revels in a similar sideman role, as the explosive Scanlon.

Peter Davis is so natural playing the burned-out Dr. Spivey that it's unsettling. As for the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, Wilkins is so remarkably composed and stiff that it took her a few seconds to crack a smile during the final bows. Nurse Ratched's aides, meanwhile, Ersky Freeman and Shelby Wallace, authentically portray the times, and a different power struggle.

Actors making brief appearances, like Monica Hayostek-Baxter and co-producer Regan Cashman as McMurphy's girlfriends, do not disappoint. John Wharton comes in toward the end as the security guard Turkle and makes us laugh.

The show would be nothing without a decent McMurphy, and in some respects it's an impossible role. The 1964 Broadway version featured Kirk Douglas; in a 2001 revival it was Gary Sinise. But the actor we associate the role with is none other than the rough-faced, demonic Nicholson in prime form.

Woods, in comparison, even with a smudge on his cheek, is almost baby-faced. His performance is gutsy, though, because he does not force himself to be anything he's not.

If you go

Twin Beach Players' production of Dale Wasserman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" will conclude at the Holland Point Civic Center, 919 Walnut Ave., North Beach at 8 p.m. May 15 and 16 and at 3 p.m. May 17. Tickets are $10, $7 for students, senior citizens and military.