Making a classic story their own

Through successive page, stage and film incarnations of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Randle P. McMurphy, the boisterous con man-turned psych ward messiah, and his implacable nemesis, Big Nurse Ratched, have become dangerously iconic figures. Reclaiming dramatic complexity from familiar stereotypes is the challenge facing any revival of Dale Wasserman’s adaptation of Ken Kesey’s allegorical 1962 novel pitting a lone rebel against the Establishment.

Topping the many fine accomplishments of Rubicon Theatre Company’s massive production is its success taking the principal antagonists in insightful new directions.

By casting a black McMurphy (Chris Butler), director Jenny Sullivan elegantly and decisively detaches the role from Jack Nicholson’s Oscar-winning film portrayal while smartly underscoring the social outsider status of the Kesey-Wasserman protagonist. This McMurphy freely plays his race cards in hilariously un-PC ways, mocking the black ward orderlies and taunting Nurse Ratched (Gigi Bermingham) with Steppenfetchit-style clowning.

Although the play is still set in 1963, Butler’s fine performance is calibrated to a more cynical era, shading McMurphy away from the novel’s burly, force-of-nature man-child toward a more canny, street-smart survivor adept at sizing up all the angles in a situation. Getting himself transferred from a work farm to Ratched’s “cushy” psych ward is the mark of a manipulator more concerned with working the system to his advantage than crusading against it.

Bermingham’s refreshing take on Ratched goes beyond the familiar embodiment of an inhuman authoritarian mercilessly defending her orderly routines against a disruptive influence. Instead, she gives us a more personalized sadist who from the outset delights in using red tape to emasculate not only her patients but her psychiatrist supervisor (Cliff DeYoung) as well. Her battles with McMurphy become more of a contest between equals -- both exploit the system to advance their agendas.

A key difference from the film is the greater importance given Chief Bromden, the towering, nearly catatonic Native American inmate whose trampled psyche and pride are revived under McMurphy’s life-loving influence. Reprising his role from the 2001 Broadway revival is the hauntingly effective Tim Sampson (whose father played Bromden in the film). Bromden narrates Kesey’s novel, and his paranoid internal visions of the all-powerful Combine are vividly realized by multimedia designer Mark Ciglar.

A superb ensemble cast convincingly differentiates the lovable but heartbreaking ward loonies (Joseph Fuqua, John Ainsworth, Travis Michael Holder, Dan Gunther, John Slade, Nick Santoro); Kara Revel lights up their lives as the sweet-hearted hooker McMurphy smuggles in for an illicit party that leads to climactic tragedy.

The production’s uniquely nuanced dynamics between McMurphy and Ratched notwithstanding, “Cuckoo’s Nest” can still be criticized, with some justification, for its black-and-white comic book morality. The psych ward -- with its Orwellian surveillance, electro-shock torture and indefinite internment with no legal recourse -- is a comfortably distanced alternate reality. Nevertheless, when McMurphy discovers that his fellow inmates have embraced its hollow promises of healing and protection voluntarily, the recognition does give us pause.

*

‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’

Where: Rubicon Theatre Company, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura

When: 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Ends: April 9

Price: $25 to $49

Contact: (805) 667-2900 or www.rubicontheatre.org

Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes