Overview
- Clint Dyer’s production features predominantly Black patients and boosts Native American motifs in an in-the-round staging that uses projections and Congo Square dance.
- Aaron Pierre draws widespread acclaim as a charged, charismatic McMurphy, while Olivia Williams steps in late to play a firm, unsympathetic Nurse Ratched.
- Multiple reviews say the show turns mental illness into a joke, noting moments where patients’ symptoms become comic business rather than sources of empathy.
- Other critics highlight the production’s drive and visual punch, though some find the symbolic flourishes heavy-handed and the pace exhausting.
- Now running at London’s Old Vic, the revival reengages a text long faulted for misogyny and the romanticising of madness in earlier adaptations.