One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
★★★★☆ Heartfelt
Church Hill Theatre: Wed 13 – Sat 16 May 2026
Review by Thom Dibdin
There is a big heart and an even bigger sense of injustice done in Leitheatre’s powerful production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, playing at the Church Hill Theatre until Saturday afternoon.
The play, adapted in 1963 by Dale Wasserman from Ken Kesey’s novel of the previous year, will always be in danger of being overshadowed by the multi-Oscar winning movie of 1975. Leitheatre’s production steps out from under that shadow, thanks to well observed, consistent performances and strong but subtle direction
Dougie Arbuckle as McMurphy and David Reynolds as Chief Bromden. Pic: Leitheatre.
The play centres around one Randle P McMurphy, a big talking small-time but repetitive felon, convicted of statutory rape, who has the naive idea of playing mad, to get himself out of five months working the fields of a prison farm.
Unfortunately for McMurphy, the ward he is sent to is run by one Nurse Ratched, the kind of person for whom the word formidable was coined, and who he automatically sees as a challenge to be taunted and vilified, as the most immediate symbol of authority.
immense
Dougie Arbuckle as McMurphy and Gabrielle Pavone as Ratched are immense in the roles. Phil Wilson’s intelligent direction allows us to see just how much they are two sides of the same coin when it comes to pig-headed belligerence. And how that belligerence is driven by opposite ideas of morality and belief.
This is far from being a two hander, however. It’s more like a fourteen hander, and Leitheatre have a real depth to the well of their performer’s abilities. There is not one weak performance among the various existing inmates of the ward, the nurses who tend to them or McMurphy’s two female friends who visit them.
Toby Russell as Aide Williams and Gabrielle Pavone as Ratched. Pic: Lietheatre.
Key to the whole venture, however, is Chief Bromden, the towering native American who presents as deaf-mute, and whose inner dialogue provides the piece’s narrative framework. David Reynolds has enough presence to get away with not quite having the character’s immense physique and conveys his turmoil and self doubt with real clarity – helped by subtle design sound from Kit Lawson.
The physical tics shown by Stefano Binando’s hallucinating Martini and Chris Learmonth’s twitching, lobotomised Ruckly are a constant reminder of where this is set. Without overdoing it or drawing attention away from the action, their physical performances are remarkably consistent.
As McMurphy swaggers around, seeking to disrupt at every level and bringing his penchant for gambling to the table, the curable patients provide a constant flow of development, reflecting the conflict between him and Ratched.
a nicely rough edge
Sean Quinn has a smooth but held-back aloofness as the intelligent Dale Harding. David Hepburn is particularly astute as the young, volatile, virginal Billy Bibbit, constantly minded of what his mother will think of him – a fear which Ratched uses to control him and, tragically as a weapon when her true self begins to show.
Graham Kells adds a nicely rough edge as the temperamental Cheswick and while Lee Shedden has little to add as sometimes violent Scanlon, he is once again constantly present and never over-egging it.
Graham Kells, Sean Quinn, Stefano Binandt and David Hepburn. Pic Leitheatre
George Townsend-Gill and Toby Russel as the main orderlies, Aide Warren and Aide Williams, add an underlying sense of the menace and overt sadism of institution life in the early Sixties. A reminder that those in power need their vicious needling troops to keep them there. John Beattie provides a solid job as Aide Turkle, bribable when McMurphy wants to bring his female friends into the ward for a party one night.
Sally Quinn is an effervescent Candy Starr. It is a somewhat cliched role, but there is real heart to to Quinn’s Starr, and her liaison with Billy, while clearly bought, is a touching one. Sandi Ferry Martin adds depth as her pal Sandra.
soft-willed
Any dictator needs their lieutenants. Laura Thomson provides another strong and necessary but largely background performance as Nurse Flinn. And while Pat Hymers plays a shade too much on the German-accented psychiatrist trope as Dr Spivey, he is a clearly pliable being, at the beck and call of Ratched, and even soft-willed enough to be charmed by McMurphy.
This all adds up to a heart-rending production, just in the terms of the story of McMurphy up against a system that is designed to beat him down, and the fallout for those who have the bad luck to be nearby when he falls.
David Reynolds, Chris Learmonth and Lee Shedden. Pic: Leitheatre.
Ratched’s creation as a believably benign authority and the revelation of her cynical cruelty is a masterclass from Pavone. McMurphy’s realisation that this is not a game any more is an equally jaw-dropping moment, from Arbuckle in an equally remarkable.
The ebb and flow, the physical performances and the background (including the versatile, single-room set, designed by Stephen Hajducki and realised by Douglass Whittaker and his team) all keep it believable and real.
speaks deeply
Clearly set in the past though this might be, such a realism allows to say much to us now, as it reflects on how authoritarian regimes keep their power and how people are imprisoned not by physical bars but by their own fears.
Leitheatre have stepped magnificently. This both entertains and entrances in its very human tale, but also speaks deeply to our condition and the reality of the society in which we live.
Running time: Two hours and 20 minutes (including one interval).
Church Hill Theatre, 33 Morningside Road, EH10 4DR.
Wed 13 – Sat 16 May 2026.
Wed – Fri: 7.30pm; Sat, mat only: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
Leitheatre Website: www.leitheatre.com
Facebook: @Leitheatre
Instagram: @leitheatre
A scene from Leitheatre’s One Flew of the Cuckoo’s Nest. Pic: Leitheatre.
ENDS
