One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Reviews: Electric Turn from Aaron Pierre in Clint Dyer’s Bold Old Vic Revival  

"... this One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest announces itself as something urgent, muscular and entirely alive. Clint Dyer’s direction is razor sharp, finding rhythm in both chaos and control."

"At its centre, Aaron Pierre is electric as McMurphy. It is a performance of real authority, full of swagger, humour and danger, but also threaded with something more fragile underneath."

"Olivia Williams’ Nurse Ratched is chillingly precise. She does not raise her voice. She does not need to. Control radiates from her in quiet, devastating ways."

"... the ensemble is faultless"

"This is not a production that leans on legacy. It stands firmly on its own terms while paying quiet, confident homage to what came before. Bold, precise and deeply affecting"

“As Randle P. McMurphy, the wily, self-destructive rebel who breaks every rule in a psychiatric hospital, Pierre — best known for the Netflix action film Rebel Ridge — is utterly persuasive.”

“Clint Dyer’s production has been touted as offering “a searing exploration of colonialism”, but while all the inmates ruled by the fearsomely impersonal Nurse Ratched are black, this is an evening full of nuance and ambiguity rather than right-on chest-beating.”

“Dyer draws remarkably authentic, jittery performances from the rest of the ensemble.”

“If the in-the-round staging — a fixture in Matthew Warchus’s final season as the Old Vic’s artistic director — means that some of the dialogue goes astray, it draws us into the heart of the skirmishes between staff and patients.”

“This play may be uncomfortable viewing at times, yet it’s exhilarating, too.”

“Aaron Pierre makes McMurphy his own with a mighty and deeply moving performance in Clint Dyer’s terrific new staging of Dale Wasserman’s 1963 play at London’s Old Vic.”

“utterly gripping: a revelatory retelling of the story that harks back to Ken Kesey’s seminal 1962 novel”

“The pristine white confines of the clinic in Ben Stones’s icy design become a metaphor for colonialism.”

“immensely potent, speaking afresh to our own divided times, that connection made more powerful by the in-the-round staging, which clasps the audience in the story.”

“embedded in the story are some outdated 1960s approaches to mental illness, together with a disturbing streak of misogyny.”

The added racial charge aside, this fittingly intense, non-conformist production delivers a chilling reminder of the perennial cost of dissent.”

“Rising star Aaron Pierre brings a tattooed, twitchy allure to hell-raising jailbird Randle P McMurphy”

"[Dyer] sets up the action with a subversive New Orleans-style carnival vignette: the cast initially drum with wild abandon before revealing period attire – this floats an idea of reclaimed ancestry, fulfilled in the story’s climax.”

“As the anarchic McMurphy, Aaron Pierre gives a storming performance...”

“although Clint Dyer’s stirring take on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel boldly reframes the story, the text can’t support his ideas.”

“Dyer gives Kesey’s tale a new political edge, as pawns in a system designed to disempower.”

“Williams, who took over the role late in rehearsals, gives Ratched a ramrod spine and starched smile.”

“Watching in the round, we become a ring of often appalled observers.”

“the strong ensemble, led by Terera’s refined Dale Harding, a paisley robe over his uniform, creates an unobtrusive patina of tics and deflections.”

“[Dyer’s] crackling version sees the play’s cruelties through their eyes – but it’s very much the male gaze.”

“Fine performances from Aaron Pierre, Giles Terera and others illuminate Clint Dyer’s relentless revival of this iconic but problematic counter-cultural artefact.”

“Dyer has cast black actors as the patients – and the orderlies - to reflect the enduring fact that black men are far more likely to be committed to an institution, in both the UK and US, than whites. It works.”

“Since the forces of (white) authority are primarily vested in Olivia Williams’s autocratic, manipulative and sour Nurse Ratched, a nasty spine of misogyny runs through the story.”

“[Pierre is] physically imposing and jacked, with a jumpily amused energy and a Mephistophelean beard. He’s an electric force onstage.”

“The show is a full-on onslaught with little modulation, compelling but exhausting.”

“there’s the creeping awareness that Kesey and Wasserman partly romanticise mental illness and also use it for comic purposes. Like I say: problematic.”

“Its portrayal of mental illness is uncomfortably outdated and there’s a troubling seam of misogyny running through it.”

“Rather than addressing any of these issues head-on, director Clint Dyer here superimposes a theme of cultural paternalism, colonialism and racial segregation.”

“there’s not really enough in the text, as it stands, to support that interpretation fully, which makes it a slightly awkward fit.”

“Aaron Pierre as McMurphy manically showboats – even after his prison-dodging ruse is exposed – and his fellow inmates are a likeable collection of trademark tics and traits.”

“Pierre is nimble and charismatic, wringing the comedy from McMurphy’s impish disruption of the medical regime.”

“This is a staging that grapples with the material and strives to reshape it... Dyer goes some way towards imbuing it vividly with new meaning; it’s a shame his vision never quite comes into focus.”

“In theory, Clint Dyer’s Old Vic revival of the 1963 stage adaptation should be bringing that same subversive energy into a new century.... Unfortunately, the result feels regressive, not rebellious.”

“The Old Vic’s in-the-round stage has been turned into a sterile psychiatric institution – with the audience sat in their chairs like recalcitrant inmates as Olivia Williams’ smug, sententious Nurse Ratchet holds court.”

“Dyer’s production has a much broader, sillier approach than either the famously harrowing, Jack Nicholson-starring 1975 film or the moody 2004 Christian Slater-starring stage revival.”

“Pierre buzzes with manic energy in the central role of Randle P McMurphy”

“There’s still less effort devoted to examining or recontextualising this story’s deeply outdated approach to mental illness. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to watch peoples’ pain be reduced to a freakshow, or comic set dressing.”

“Dyer also doesn’t interrogate the misogyny of a story where women are either disposable floozies or starched harridans ...”

"Bold but misfiring attempt to find intersectional depth in Ken Kesey’s dated ’60s classic"

"The former National Theatre deputy has reimagined Dale Wasserman’s 1963 stage adaptation as an intersectional work about racial hierarchies... But Kesey’s essentially libertarian allegory for how the system crushes bright, interesting and rebellious individuals does not really translate that well into a parable of collective solidarity."

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not exactly Shakespeare-level stuff, ie a text so fundamentally robust that it can take aggressive reinterpretation."

"TV star Aaron Pierre feels somewhat miscast in the role of charismatic petty criminal Randle P McMurphy... he’s so untroubled by Ratched et al that there’s a lack of friction until the very end, a cheeky Road Runner to her Wile E Coyote."

"But the supporting cast is largely great, not least Giles Terera, an actor of stature who seems happy (or stoic) about taking on characterful supporting roles."

"... Williams does a fine job as Ratched, whose froideur is tempered by a benign, motherly quality… "

"It’s a really interesting idea, with a mostly great cast, of a historically significant play that I can’t imagine getting revived again any time soon."

"‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ Returns With Contemporary Bite"

"A new London production highlights the story’s racial element and shows how much has changed since the play’s 1963 premiere."

"McMurphy’s demise is all the more affecting because, as played by Aaron Pierre, he had seemed indestructible. Pierre gives him a chest-puffing, childlike boisterousness"

"Today, when it comes to mental health, the private sector may be of greater concern than the state. Still, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” remains a potent parable about power and social conditioning."

"Dyer is inviting us to consider the parallels between Black experiences and the erasure of Indigenous culture. That’s not a stretch, but given the semi-allegorical quality of the original material, the racializing of the inmates has the muddled feel of a mixed metaphor."

"Williams, regrettably miscast as Nurse Ratched, lacks the necessary aura of stringent menace. She is supposed to embody power but too often has the helpless aspect of a substitute teacher losing control of the class."

"Some key aspects of this play sit uneasily with today’s sensibilities... The trouble is, it’s also very funny and emotionally arresting. I came away thinking about how much of human experience is increasingly off-limits in drama."