One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is probably best known as the Oscar winning film, starring Jack Nicholson. It is based on the novel written by Ken Kesey, and adapted into a Broadway play by Dale Wasserman.
It is a disturbing, yet comic play set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. The rebellious RP McMurphy has himself committed, in the belief that he can avoid prison time.
He strongly resists the dictatorial regime he encounters, thus embarking on a collision course with the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, who exercises total control over the patients under her care.
We see his humanity with his fellow patients and his defence of their rights, rousing them to revolt against their mental and physical imprisonment.
By Dale Wasserman
From the novel by Ken Kesey
By kind permission of Samuel French
