'CUCKOO'S NEST' tense

Humor and Horror Mixed in 'Snake Pit'

By PETER BELLAMY

Flain Dealer Drama Critic

and intelligent inmate. The patient's heroic service in the

and rape.

NEW YORK-It is no wonKorean War is balanced by a der that the play "One Flew record of drunkenness, assault Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Tension builds to the highly starring Kirk Douglas at The melodramatic climax as the Cort Theater, has opened to engaging if vicious inmatemixed critical notices. sensing the nurse's sexual

Here is a play that is most-starvationbecomes spokesly a farce about an insane man for a ward of nonviolent asylum, a treatment of a sub-patients and bets large sums ject which many do not find he can break the nurse emofunny. tionally.

Moreover, the electric shock He darn near does, but she treatments, a lobotomy, and knows what he's up to and a mercy killing are undeni-her revenge is fiendish. ably unpleasant. Some will DOUGLAS GIVES a most find the language too gamy. magnetic and convincing porThe play's weird mixture of trayal of the ultra-masculine, unrestrained humor and grim-reckless, amoral inmate whose ness and the faultless per-detection of the nursing superformance of the cast, how-visor's emotional weakness ever, causes the audience to leads to his doom. Joan Tetalternately roar with merri-zel, as the supervisor, wears ment and stay silent with her aura of cold, smug effishock. ciency like a glove.

"One Flew Over the William Daniels steals much Cuckoo's Nest," if nothing of the laughter as the brilelse, is most unusual and ex-liantly conversational, latent citing. homosexual who has volunTHE REASON FOR tarily committed himself to much laughter, I think, is the asylum. Ed Ames, as the that the audience is laughing half-breed lost in a world with, not at, the inmates most of the time.

SO

Much of the play's humor becomes more credible if one

where he is neither white nor an Indian, is pathetic as the inmate reduced to a catatonic state.

remembers that the line beOthers in bit parts as doctween sanity and insanity is tors, nurses, guards and the often a fine one, and that acutely and chronically insane many borderline cases are emerge as authentic human not only brilliant but highly beings. Alex Segal's direction amusing. keeps the action at high tension. Will Steven Armstrong's It cannot be denied that scenic and lighting effects are state mental institutions, as dramatic.

in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," have had wild parties by inmates, bribery of underpaid guards, and emotional instability among staff members.

THE PLAY WAS written by Dale Wasserman and based on a novel by Ken Kesey. It gets its title from the nursery rhyme which ends: "One flew east, and one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo's nest."

Basically, the play is the story of the conflict between a neurotic nursing supervisor and an attractive, virile, glib