I guess we all like to feel there’s a Randle P McMurphy deep inside us and after seeing this play we’re all glad to keep him there and we have to realise it’s best to continue to conform. Dr. David Kelly didn’t and he and McMurphy suffered a similar sad and sorry end.
A man with a great zest for life and a great distaste of authority is sent, as a result of his rebelliousness, from jail to a mental institution; there he continues to fight the system and is punished with a lobotomy. By this time he has formed a strong bond with his fellow inmates, they deny him the indignity of living in this state and suffocate him.
It all makes a wonderful evening in the theatre! This is a very fine production of this very fine play by one of Wales’ finest theatre companies. The set is magnificent. It looked as if the back wall of the stage had been removed and we were looking into the building next door, it was so realistic and lit, quite literally, so brilliantly giving the audience a touch of the oppression the inmates were living under. In was all so real yet, at the same time, so gloriously theatrical with even a touch of melodrama.
Robert Perkins’ McMurphy burst on to the stage like a machine gun and kept up the pace of the bullets right to the end, a bravura performance but with a sensitivity indicating the intelligence that lay somewhere inside that strong off-beat
mind. As his adversary, Nurse Rachet, Kerry Peers touched exactly the right note. Being at various time completely convincing yet retaining the magic of the actress and not afraid to introduce a touch of melodrama when required.
And we laughed! The banter and exchanges between the inmates, at first bewildered by this whizz-kidd, new arrival but soon won over and led by him into innocent rebelliousness, is one of the joys of the evening and a great example of a group of actors working off and so well with each other.
John Cordingly gives a remarkably realistic portrayal as the voluntary inmate, Scanlon and Dyfrig Morris as Chief Bromden is extremely striking and has us all gunning for him when he brings the whole hateful edifice tumbling down.
With such excellent work coming from The Sherman Theatre Company, The Torch Theatre, The Wales Theatre Company and Clwyd Theatre Cymru we might be excused feeling that theatre in Wales has, at last ,come of age. Just think what could be done if every company received proper funding!
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