One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Through Oct. 16, $25-$45, People's Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, 610-644-3500, peopleslight.org.

by Mark Cofta

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Published: Sep 21, 2010

Mark Garvin

theater

The film's 35th anniversary has inspired productions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest all over the country, a nice reminder of how Dale Wasserman's play stays much truer to Ken Kesey's novel than the movie, through Chief Bromden's oh-so-'60s antiestablishment fears of "The Machine." In People's Light & Theatre Co.'s charged production, directed by UArts grad Jackson Gay, Brandon A. Oakes' youthful chief is appropriately tragic, while William Zielinski's suitably haggard McMurphy, a con man with long-dormant integrity, is locked in mortal combat with Nurse Ratched (a serenely steely Marcia Saunders) for Bromden's and all the other institutionalized patients' — i.e., our — souls.

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