One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest last play of
Kanata Theatre's season

by Clare Flockton

Kanata Theatre has had an extremely entertaining and exceptionally rewarding 39^th season. It opened its season with Ruth and Augustus Goetz's The Heiress, which was a wonderful play that showcased some of the most elaborate costumes seen on the Ron Maslin stage.

The Long Weekend, written by Norm Foster, then brought the house down with fits of laughter. Tom Stoppard's adaptation of The Seagull displayed a set that was simply out of this world.

Then there was Martin Sterling's Framed!, which was full of twists and turns.

Now we have the final production of the 39^th season, Dale Wasserman's
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, directed by Shelagh Mills.

Kanata Theatre will be showing how an amateur theatre company can really be of professional caliber.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is an edgy play set in a psychiatric institution in the 1960's. Inmate Randle P. McMurphy is a small time criminal who decides that a stint in a mental hospital would be a much easier sentence to carry out than having to do his time in jail.

McMurphy has an utter lack of respect for the rules and regulations that keep the hospital functioning on a day to day basis.
McMurphy's bad habits, such as gambling, fighting and trouble-making earn him fast friendships with his fellow inmates who suffer from varying degrees of mental disorders, but quickly set him in opposition with the dictatorial Nurse Ratched.

This play is a powerful production that will take the audience on a roller coaster ride of emotions.

The inmates evoke such a wide range because most of them have admitted themselves into the hospital because they feel life on the outside is just too much to handle and they crave the rigidity and the rules that govern the institution. This is a humorous, sensitive and
thought provoking play that is definitely a great one to end the 39^th season with.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest runs from May 20 to 31 with black out days on Sunday and Monday. Tickets are $15 and curtain is at 8 p.m. sharp.

Advance tickets can be purchased starting May 6 from the box office located at 1 Ron Maslin Way, Kanata.

Box-office hours are 5 to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday then 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.