ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
CLOSING TODAY at ONSTAGE!
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Read what the Critics had to say about this show:
 

"And then there's something like Cuckoo's Nest, which in some ways blew me away. This has everything to do with their director selection. Bill Fountain is a director with vision and ideas. His concepts pay off. This opinion comes after seeing Cuckoo's Nest and his take on Julius Caesar earlier this year at the Dallas Hub Theater. (Keep an eye on his Level Ground Arts, which is doing The Tempest in June and, later this year, Evil Dead: The Musical.)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which closes this weekend, has a large cast of which maybe a quarter comes off as amateur. But most of the major roles are handled with care and depth, notably Desiree Fultz as Nurse Ratched, Daylon Walton as Chief Bromden, Ken Long as Ruckly, Allen Matthews as Dale and Nick Jones as the young patient Billy. Randal Scott, in the role of McMurphy that Jack Nicholson made famous in the movie, rushed things on opening weekend, but he still made the character intimidating and detestable, yet somehow likable. That's the way it should be.

The production stood out. The walls of the ward were grimy and unappealing and the fear that any of these crazies could leap off the stage and attack you was always a concern. Fountain created an atmosphere that was cold, scary and uncomfortable, and the staging hit the poignant moments and symbolism in Ken Kesey's original novel (which was adapted by Dale Wasserman for the stage). You would never want to visit this place, much less hang with any of its inhabitants. Bravo for all that.  At $15, I highly recommend it."  - Mark Lowry, TheaterJones.com

"There's an Insanely Well Acted House of Blue Leaves in Arlington and Bedlam in Bedford with Cuckoo's Nest."

"A worthy companion piece to House of Blue Leaves, with its Ken Kesey-esque twists, is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the stage play by Dale Wasserman based on Kesey's 1960s novel. Onstage in Bedford, a small community theater, has a strong production of it going on. Theirs is better directed (by Bill Fountain), better acted (by some first-timers) and better designed (particularly Fountain's soundtrack of vintage rock and Sam Nance's sharp lighting) than the sterile big-budget version that went up a few months ago at the all-professional Contemporary Theatre of Dallas.

What the Bedford theater gets right that CTD didn't is the level to which the inmates take over their asylum. Set in a grubby state mental hospital day room, Cuckoo's Nest charts the changes in a group of men—"chronics, walkers and vegetables"—suffering varying levels of psychoses. Their catalyst is R.P. McMurphy (Randal Scott), a convicted rapist trying to avoid a prison work-farm by pretending to be "bull-goose loony." Or is it not an act?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest continues through May 23 at Onstage in Bedford. Call 817-354-6444. From the moment he's admitted, McMurphy is under the icy gaze of Nurse Ratched (Desiree Fultz), a gorgon who goads each patient with verbal sucker punches. "What would your mother say?" is her way of knocking the stuffing out of stuttering teenager Billy Bibbitt (Nick Jones) whenever he tries standing up to the nurse's bullying.

Fountain has created an off-kilter atmosphere for this production that always feels a little dangerous, which is exciting. Occasionally, a patient wanders into the audience, mumbling and drooling, until an "orderly" finds him and escorts him back to the "ward." Fights escalate to all-out screaming bedlam. Ruckly (Ken Long), a patient who thinks he's Jesus, pees himself. And the party scene, when McMurphy sneaks two whores in after-hours, has a furtive sense of rule-breaking mischief.

Scott, hair combed into a Kevin-Spacey-as-Verbal-Kint point, rushes his dialogue and claps his hands too much, but otherwise sends off plenty of sparks as McMurphy. As his friend "Chief Broom," Daylon Walton makes his character's poetic monologues (the squishiest aspect of the stage version) into quiet moments of insight into how it must feel to be locked inside a terribly troubled mind. And Ms. Fultz keeps Nurse Ratched's syrupy malevolence on a low, and terrifying, simmer.

The secret of making Cuckoo's Nest this good, apparently, is giving the actors the freedom to go more than a little bit batshit crazy. "  - Elaine Liner, Dallas Observer.

"Of the hundreds of productions I’ve reviewed in Dallas, Fort Worth and points between since 2001, when I joined the Dallas Observer, it’s some that went way, way out that I remember best.. To keep me entertained, frighten me a little. At Onstage in Bedford’s production of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (reviewed here), the mental patients occasionally “escaped” from the hospital and wandered out into the audience. One of them sat down next to me, mumbling to himself, drooling a little, and he stayed there until an “orderly” came out to get him. Director Bill Fountain added heaps more unpredictable behavior to the patient-characters in this play." - Elaine Liner, from the Article "Risky Bidness" on TheaterJones.com