‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ in Beverly Hills; ‘Dream Fringe’ at Harman Avenue; ‘Red River Bar’ at Deja Vu

Twenty-five years after its Broadway premiere, Dale Wasserman’s stage adaptation of Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is not doing well under time’s gaze. It isn’t that the depiction of R. P. McMurphy railing against the psychiatric monolith, in the person of Nurse Ratched, has become a quaint ‘60s libertarian romance. It is Wasserman’s inability to find an equivalent to Kesey’s tone of hallucinatory wisdom, in the voice of the incarcerated Indian, Chief Bromden, that makes the play far less than Milos Forman’s film version.

To be sure, that voice is in the play, but in a way that feels grafted on. In Manu Tupou’s production at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, William P. Burns’ Chief is nearly inaudibly recorded on taped voice-overs (Tupou also did the sound). One of the story’s key components is thus juggled and dropped--typical of a three-hour show full of miscues.

If the strategy was to make Joanna Miles’ Ratched (misspelled as Rachet in the program) an automaton, it’s never evident that this is a woman covering a wasps’ nest of inner psychoses--something Kesey makes immediately clear. Far from being in control, Miles appears tentative, even hesitant.

This gives Robert Viharo little to play off as McMurphy, although his lumberjack strut and stage-filling bravado suggest the image of the Last Free Man on Earth (it also suggests Kirk Douglas, the original stage McMurphy, more than Jack Nicholson).

Viharo’s mates play at being mentally damaged, but seldom delve into their human identities. Brendon Dillon makes Harding such a continental gentleman we wonder why he’s institutionalized. The problems extend to Nino Rizzi’s lights and set, which lack nearly all the effects and tricks Wasserman’s script calls for.

“The Dream Fringe”

“The Dream Fringe” is a play with so many stylistic hiccups that you can’t be sure if its producing entity, the Thunderbird Theatre Company, intended the surreal aura that surrounds Eric Karten’s staging at the Harman Avenue Theatre.

Tim Burns’s comedy/drama centers on Kyle, a young, smug, self-loathing dramatist lost in Hollywood (Nico Freccia). But the play is populated by his friends, mostly struggling actors still taking the kinds of courses offered at the Harman Theatre during non-performance hours. Fiction and fact are curiously blurred here, in a way perhaps not possible in any other city.

This, alas, is the most interesting aspect of “The Dream Fringe.” We might believe that Kyle’s bitter, insulting verbosity would permanently alienate his pals (Hollywood success, after all, is measured by how far you bury your friends), had Burns given him the monopoly on acid commentary. But Burns falls into the same trap David Rabe tumbled into with “Hurlyburly,” another play about the show-biz fringe: doling out the same entertaining voice to most of the characters, thus making them sound alike.

Jason Singer’s erstwhile producer and Jeanine Jackson’s ex-porn star bring some observed details to stereotypical roles. The word spew , though, often gets the better of Freccia, and the rest of Karten’s cast lacks the skill needed for social comedy. Susan Gratch’s living room, full of CD players and chrome, is attractive but doesn’t look like the wing of a mansion.

‘Red River Bar’

The Deja Vu Coffeehouse has served up some witty, pungent comedies looking at lesbian lives. Things can get especially funny in these shows when straight folks get mixed in. Deja Vu’s “Peacocks,” for instance, showed this wonderfully. Sheri Bailey’s “Mayhem at the Red River Bar” tries for the same combination of sexual volatility. It is not so wonderful.

Bailey’s plot is convoluted beyond telling, but one conflict she doesn’t use is inherent in its Texas panhandle setting--a place where Bailey’s women might still be sexual outlaws. C. J. Towner’s bar, besides being the site of a bloody homicide, is where C. J.’s ex-husband returns after 20 years’ absence (Pete L’Angelle), her daughter discovers her lesbian identity (Lauren Ehrhardt Feder) and her son learns that it’s not nice to deceive mom (Todd Feder).

Add to this a ludicrous running gag with the ghost of the murdered woman (Naomi) and an incredible sub-plot involving a detective (and C. J.’s lover played by January Zern), and you end up with bland, TV-influenced kitsch and an O. Henry-like happy ending. Smitty’s halting direction robs the show of any potential comic pulse, though Lynn Wanlass’ C. J. rises above a lifeless cast.