I went to see One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest at PCS's Armory Theatre this past Tuesday. I hadn't seen the movie or read the book yet so the unfolding of the story and getting to know the characters was new to me. I'd heard cultural references to Nurse Ratched and Jack Nicholson's personification of Randle McMurphy but I wasn't prepared for how the second act would conclude.
The set design was one of the best I've seen ever... it was so realistic with the tiled floor, screened windows, green wall tiles, industrial lights, a giant electrical circuit breaker board, the echo in the "bathroom". All the characters were well-fleshed out and the show seemed to go by so quickly..
However, it didn't hit me until afterward but this play really struck a nerve in me. Billy Bibbit, the young guy who stuttered and McMurphy, the raucous "new guy" who really stirs up the quiet balance of the institution, challenging authority right away and Chief Bromden, the Native American mute and narrator who gets "free" in the end. It caused me to recollect the documentary Titicut Follies (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titicut_Follies), which I saw in college, about the inhumane treatment of "inmates/patients in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, MA." There wasn't anything quite as extreme as was portrayed in the play but it was definitely proof of a terrible period in our history with the maltreatment of the people deemed by society as "insane" or "mental". Also, the gross misunderstanding of Native culture and customs by so-called "authority".
The terror that Billy Bibbit expressed when Nurse Ratched threatened to tell his mom about a sexual encounter gave me a visceral reaction and heartbreak when he finally succeeded in killing himself. The way the cold, vindictive Nurse Ratched calmly pushed him over the edge.
When they wheeled a lobotomized McMurphy on the gurney, I was speechless.. they way the zapped the life out of him, reduced him to a vegetable. I thought of my friend Curt, his troubles as a kid, in and out of treatment as a young adult and his eventual death from a heroine overdose... also, Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where he recounts his experience with his society-imposed label as "insane", shock treatment and his disassociation with his "former" self.
What really hit hard for me was this reminded me of how I felt when I started taking Zoloft; that horrible transition period and wondering if I needed in-patient care back then. It really stirred some things up; the pain, feeling sorry for myself, anger that I fall into the "other" group. Fortunately I had a session with my counselor today and was able to get a lot of this out in a safe environment. I'm definitely a tangled ball of yarn.
