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One flew over the cuckoo s nest
Oscar worthy speech
Action Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over Nest of the cuckoo's" centered on the battle of the will of Randle McMurphy, a convict who thinks a trip to the hospital's mental state would be an easy way to ride out his sentence, and Nurse Ratched, who runs the ward with a smile of calm and hand iron. However, in some ways, the key character is Chief Bromden, the longest-tenured patient ward, which serves (in the novel and to a lesser extent in the play) as the narrator of the story. His relationship with McMurphy and contrast bow their fate is the core problem.
Mac, Big Nurse and Chief Broom - as the characters are also known - is a key strength of the story. Here is a look at actors tasked with bringing them to life on stage.
PJ Sosko (McMurphy)
Director Rose Riordan says that in casting someone as Mac she "was looking for someone who had a level of charisma and testosterone. The thing that PJ has is he's a little larger than life naturally. Mac is kind of a soft-hearted thug, and I think PJ has some of that."
Sosko lives in New York, where he's done stage and TV work (including a villain role on one of the final New York episodes in the "Law & Order" franchise). But he worked previously at Portland Center Stage in the lead role of a 2008 stage adaptation of Kesey's other masterpiece, "Sometimes a Great Notion," and is happy "to come back here and do another character in the canon. It's a real small canon, and I've done it now."
"Honestly, dude, I didn't trust anyone else to do it right. Mac's an entertainer; I'm an entertainer. I'm not coming from a place of being a (jerk). I dunno, I just think I'm a good egg. And I'm here to tell a story."
You might think Sosko has a tough job, stepping into a role made famous by Jack Nicholson in the Oscar-gobbling film. But, though he says he's always admired Nicholson's performance, he's not thinking about that.
"There's a free spirit in Mac that everyone can relate to. Jack had his version and I have mine. You can't play Mac without a devil-may-care attitude. And I got a good devil in me."
Gretchen Corbett (Nurse Ratched)
"All the time, when I tell people what role I'm doing, they go, 'Whoa!'" Corbett says. "She looms large. My challenge with this is to come at it as though she's a real person. And I have to make it up, because it's not really in the book."
Indeed, Kesey kept his story's villain pure. She's seen only through the eyes of others, for whom she is an unchanging symbol of oppressive power and control. So it's up to Corbett, a respected veteran of the Portland stage, to play the woman behind the smiling yet fearsome facade.
"Every Nurse Ratched does the same thing," she notes. "But this is my Nurse Ratched. I know I don't look like the woman described in the book ... but I have my own little backpack of thoughts about her."
Tim Sampson (Chief Bromden)
As striking as the characters of McMurphy and Ratched need to be, Riordan says she never worried about finding suitably compelling actors for those roles. But Bromden, the towering half-Native American who becomes the focus of the story's redemptive theme, was another matter. "It's so specific, in terms of his size, his age."
Tim Sampson, it turns out, has equally specific connections to the role. A member of the Muskogee tribe from Oklahoma, not only has Sampson played the part before (alongside Gary Sinise in a Steppenwolf Theatre production that ran in Chicago, London and on Broadway), but his father, Will Sampson, also played the role in the 1975 movie.
The father-son connection is crucial. The elder Sampson got his son into acting and stunt work, and in Tim Sampson's view the key to understanding Chief Bromden is in the love the character had for his father, whose humiliation was the cause of the Chief's own mental collapse.
When performing on Broadway, Sampson recalls, he came to recognize the power of the story's messages, which at least in part relate to the importance of continuity with nature, family and culture. "One night this great big man came up to me after the show, crying. And he said, 'Tonight I'm going to go right back to the hotel and call my dad.'"
That connection is part of what it means to be mentally healthy, Sampson says. "My dad used to always tell me, 'Always know where you've come from, who you are and where you're going.'"
Oscar-worthy speech
Film inspires stuttering therapy programs
By Andrew M. Seder aseder@timesleader.com
DALLAS TWP. – For years, when it came to the portrayal of someone with a stutter in a Hollywood movie, the character was usually used as comic relief. But the Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech” has placed the spotlight on stuttering and has drawn rave reviews for the actors’ portrayals and the struggle more than 3 million Americans go through each day.
Thirteen people who deal with stuttering are currently undergoing therapy at The Speech-Language-Hearing Center at Misericordia University.
Glen Tellis, chairman of the school’s speech-language pathology program, was among the first to see the movie when it came to Northeast Pennsylvania theaters in December.
He said rave reviews from those in the speech-language field worldwide inspired him to see the movie once it appeared locally. He said the high expectations colleagues created were met – and exceeded.
“I think it’s right up there as one of the best movies I’ve seen. It was so powerful,” said Tellis, of Dallas.
He said the honest portrayals by the actors, especially Geoffrey Rush, who plays speech therapist Lionel Logue, and Colin Firth, who plays King George VI, “were amazing.”
“I think it was pretty realistic,” he said of Firth’s “stutter.” “He didn’t overact at all. He hit it head on.”
Inspires hope
For his clients and others with a stutter who have seen the movie, Tellis said the message you walk away from is one of hope.
Chris Monjelo, of Pittston, has had a stutter for as long as he can remember. The 19-year-old Lake-Lehman High School graduate recalls when friends first began telling him he stuttered he didn’t believe them because he was in denial.
Finally, when he realized it was true, he became fearful of speaking in public and found ways to avoid it in school. He would beg his mom to let him stay home on days he had oral assignments and skip classes when he was set to address the class.
He said he went most of high school without speaking to classmates.
“I guess I was virtually mute,” said Monjelo on Thursday during a break from a therapy session with Susan Minsavage, a speech language pathology graduate student from Kingston.
He came to the clinic a year ago and has made remarkable strides, Tellis said.
“When he first came, it took him 2 or 3 minutes just to say his name,” Tellis said. Now, thanks to therapy and a willingness to want to control his stutter, Monjelo is talking with confidence and even got a job at a gas station in Lehman Township, where he interacts with customers.
As a reporter interviewed him, with a photographer and videographer in the room, Monjelo’s stutter resurfaced.
He noted that “when I first came here my speaking was very restricted and I would have probably never had done something like this.”
But with Tellis and Minsavage looking on and reminding him of methods to deal with the stutter, he spoke clearer and more assured, just as King George VI was able to do in the movie and in real life.
Sheds light on problem
The movie, which Monjelo watched in Wilkes-Barre last month, left him feeling “empowered” and glad that finally someone was able “to shed some light on stuttering.”
Though there have been great strides in stuttering therapy, the exact cause of the speech disorder is still not known.
According to the Stuttering Foundation, “There are four factors most likely to contribute to the development of stuttering: genetics; child development; neurophysiology; and family dynamics.”
But fantasy wasn’t used to make the movie into something unreal or to give false hope that stuttering is something that could be healed.
“There is no major Hollywood ending,” said Tellis, who is one of about 200 Specialty Board on Fluency Disorders-recognized specialists in the world and one of only 10 in Pennsylvania. “There is no cure for stuttering, but it can be managed effectively.”
He said one of the keys is to seek treatment early. Most people develop a stutter at the age of 2 or 3. He said that’s the time to begin therapy.
While he watched the movie with a much deeper and more personal perspective than most who were in the Cinemark Theater on Montage Mountain that day after Christmas, Tellis said he could see and hear that those who crammed into the theater with him walked away with a deeper appreciation of stuttering and the psychological issues that impact it.
Those issues include the fear of speaking, the fear of being made fun of or laughed at, the fear of being mimicked.
He said the majority of those in that theater – and any theater that’s been playing the movie the past three months – may not be able to relate because they don’t struggle with the speech disorder or know someone who does. But for those who do deal or help others deal with stuttering, the movie sent a powerful message.
“(Stuttering) doesn’t stop you from getting anywhere in life,” he said, whether you’re the king of England, Vice President Joe Biden or James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, all people who have overcome a stutter.
Dozen Oscar nominations
The movie is nominated for 12 Oscars at tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony, including best movie, best director, best actor for Firth, and Rush for best supporting actor. In it, the stuttering struggles of King George VI and the efforts by Logue to help him overcome the impediment are chronicled.
Stuttering is nothing new to movies, but Tellis points out that when many people are asked to recall a movie character with a stutter, it’s typically Michael Palin’s portrayal of Ken Pile in “A Fish Called Wanda.” Palin portrays Pile as an awkward, nervous, recluse, stereotypes about stutters that Tellis said are unfortunate and mostly untrue.
Other characters have had similar maladies because of stuttering, including the Billy Bibbit character portrayed by Brad Dourif in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The character has a self-esteem problem and even attempts suicide after he’s laughed following a marriage proposal.
Tellis said to have a portrayal that goes much deeper than stereotypes and clich�s is a red letter day for those in the field and those struggling with a stutter.
Monjelo said for the time he was thinking about getting a job where he will have to deal with others only slightly. But now he says he just did not want to get a job where he interacted with others, he wanted to become a speech therapist so she can help others like him have helped.
He enrolled at Luzerne County Community College in hopes to get enough general education credits transfer to universities that offer speech therapy programs, such as the Misericordia. In the meantime, he is busy trying to form a support group of Northeastern Pennsylvania stutterers' which will meet at the clinic Misericordia.
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