Some of the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Some of the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Take one prisoner pretending to be insane and a nurse intimidating patients in a mental institution and you have a recipe for good drama.
This is the general plot for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is being performed by the Dannevirke Theatre Company next month.
Director Elijah Graham said the company wanted to do something dramatic.
"We've been doing a lot of comedies recently and that drama aspect, that real heavy theatre approach, is really missing from the community at the moment."
It was his partner, Lucy Mavin, who plays Nurse Ratched, that suggested the play, based on a novel by Ken Kesey.
The story, or at least the character of Nurse Ratched, was well-known in pop culture.
Graham said he was trying to modernise the story a little bit as it had been performed in Dannevirke about 30 years ago.
He had written an underscore for the production which was more modern.
A lot of the cast were also younger as in the original story, Nurse Ratched was in her 50s whereas in this play, she was in her 20s.
"But make no mistake, she is still just as threatening or overpowering as an older lady could be."
Graham said rehearsals were going "really well" for the cast of 16 and had started work getting into the "nitty gritty" of the technical side before getting all the make-up and costumes and running through the finer details.
The theatre company usually did one big production every two years, with its most recent being The Addams Family, which was staged in Dannevirke Town Hall.
While this one was considered smaller as it was being performed in the Fountain Theatre, it was still just as big in terms of cast and the amount of detail that had gone into set design and production.
"Everyone's involved. It's an incredible effort."
Graham was grateful for the great support from the community.
"It gets harder because the costs of these productions gets higher and higher as time moves on and technology gets more modern. I think we're doing all right trying to keep up with it."
The production did come with a warning that it was not for young children and tickets would only be sold to mature audiences.
Graham said there would be "some really heavy stuff".
"[There are] themes in the show that aren't for everyone.
"Things that happen in this production, they're very real. These are very real people and very real concepts, and very real illnesses. There are places around the world that still hold people and treat them in the way that they're treated in the show.
