By Bari Lieberman
EDGE Writer
For years English classes across the nation have been forcing their students to analyze Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but QuantUM Entertainment brings the novel to life for their theatrical rendition of Dale Wasserman’s play for University of Miami students and community.
The play remains true to the novel and takes place in a mental institution during the late 1950s when electroshock therapy and lobotomies served as constant threats to patients. The simple setting, revolving solely around the ward’s lounge, allows the audience to focus on the interpersonal relations and developments between the social outcasts known as the patients.
The play begins with Randle McMurphy, played by Nicholas Correnti, being the newly admitted patient who transfers from the Pendleton Work Farm. Correnti combined the perfect mix of a bad-boy demeanor with psychopathic tendencies to create a believable leader and source of empowerment for the residing patients.
Throughout the course of McMurphy’s stay, he serves as the martyr for the other patients and motivates them enough to break free from the restrictions set forth by the controlling nurse played by Lindsay Childs.
Graduate student Mario Matus Villa plays the half-Indian narrator, Chief Bromden, who maintains the fa