What a lumpy play Dale Wasserman fashioned out of Ken Kesey's landmark novel about the 1960s counterculture. It is hardly a wonder that it initially bombed on Broadway, and that Milos Forman's skilled film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson became much better known than the stage version.
At its base the story is a metaphor of societal rebellion: iconoclast RP McMurphy checks himself into an insane asylum in order to avoid going to prison. In his attempts to open up the imaginations of its downtrodden patients, he provokes further repression from the powers that be - as represented by the manipulative Nurse Ratched - and ends up lobotomised. Wasserman lays on melodrama with a trowel in the form of the patients' individual struggles, particularly those of the native American Chief who ends up finding liberation through McMurphy's sacrifice.
This time last year Lane Productions, the Dublin-based commercial theatre team behind Stones in his Pockets, scored a big audience hit with a staging of Twelve Angry Men. Now they are back with a production of Cuckoo's Nest staged by the same director, Terry Byrne, presumably in an attempt to recapture that same audience with a recognisable title. But despite a couple of strong individual performances and a striking set by Moggie Douglas, Byrne and his uneven cast can't handle the play's challenges.
The heart of the problem lies in the two lead performances. Joe Hanley has an explosive wildness as McMurphy, but we get no sense of an inner life. What is he trying to achieve by fomenting rebellion among the patients, and why does he choose to stay when the window is literally open for his escape in the play's penultimate scene? For her part, Liz Schwarz starts out perhaps too strong as Nurse Ratched. It is hinted too soon that there is pure steel behind that pasted-on style, and by the second act she has worked herself into such a lather that all plausibility has disappeared.
Among the supporting cast, Paul Bennett (the lovably mild-mannered Harding) and particularly Liam O'Brien as the stuttering, virginal Billy Bibbitt are quite convincing. Titus Menchaca is certainly physically imposing as the Chief, but he needs to loosen up into the role. There is an overall sense that the ensemble will improve as the run goes on.
Group scenes work best - notably the basketball game in act two and the after-hours party - but there are too many scenes of patients standing in lines and too many awkward blackouts here. A much stronger directorial presence was needed to negotiate this problematic script.
· Until January. Box office: 00 353 1 679 5720.
