Director lines 'Cuckoo's Nest' with Kesey's roots in the '50s.

Byline: Fred Crafts The Register-Guard

Drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll. Power to the people. Different strokes for different folks. Ken Kesey. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Ah, that sounds like the '60s. Wrong. Try the fabulous '50s. Or so claims Rob Urbaniti, a New York City director who's at work at the University of Oregon on the stage version of Kesey's famous novel.

Although Kesey himself is linked directly with the '60s, Urbaniti views "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" as more beatnik than hippie. He has gone back to Kesey's post-World War II roots - the Pleasant Hill author lived from 1935 to 2001 - and is directing the play "as if it were Ken Kesey's hallucination of America in the '50s."

Based on Kesey's real-life adventures on the night shift at a mental ward, the novel illuminates his belief that the patients were not so much mentally unstable as more individualized than society at the time was able to accept.

The 1962 novel about the battle between Nurse Ratched and patient Randle Patrick McMurphy was turned into a Broadway play by Dale Wasserman in 1963, with Kirk Douglas as McMurphy. After revisions, it reappeared off-Broadway in 1971.

The novel was adapted into a motion picture in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphy. The film won Academy Awards for best picture, best director, best screenplay, best actor and best actress.

But Kesey was reported to have deeply disliked both the play and the movie.

All that history weighed heavily on the 46-year-old Urbaniti as he returned to Eugene as a guest director at the university, where he received his doctoral degree in theater arts in 1994.

"I had always thought of `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' as being a '60s, hippie kind of thing. But the fact is the book was written in the late '50s and published in the early '60s, which means, if the psychiatric ward represents a microcosm of society, which Kesey has stated and most people accept, then it would be American society in the '50s."

"It's not about the '60s when the revolt was on the surface. It was about the '50s, when the revolt was brewing under," he says.

"In the '60s, the revolutions were in the streets, to use the cliche. But the '50s are really more fascinating. The dominant culture was much more repressive. Those people were really pioneers, both in terms of their politics and in terms of their art. They were breaking through the boundaries. By the '60s, the boundaries were pretty much broken through. Kesey was really a pioneer, and I really respect him for that."

If this were the '50s, Urbaniti says, "Nurse Ratched would be musically represented by Doris Day or Patti Page, a sort of bland, sexless white woman singing moralistic songs. And McMurphy would be like Jerry Lee Lewis or Bill Haley, one of those wild rockers who would sing about sex and parties," Urbaniti says.

Urbaniti is using 1950s- styled costumes, along with music from that era, and adding a surrealistic element.

"The novel is told through the perspective of Chief Brom- den, the Native American schizophrenic. That means that the entire book is from the point of view of a mental patient. I don't want to look at this play as if it were a documentary. I want to look at the day ward and the hospital the way the patient sees it, which is very much part and parcel of what the book is," he says.

All in all, Urbaniti figures it will be something more akin to what Kesey had in mind:

"I don't want to make it sound like I'm being slavish to Kesey. We honor the play. We honor some of Kesey's vision, then I have my own take on it."

In New York, Urbaniti received a fellowship from the Drama League and became a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He has directed plays for the Classic Stage Company, the Culture Project, the Salon, Westbeth, HERE, the Pearl Theatre, the Greenwich Street Theatre and Lincoln Center Theatre Showcase Series. Currently, he is an associate artistic director of the Queen's Theatre in the Park on Long Island. Lately, he has begun writing plays, which are getting productions around the country.

For his University Theatre production, Urbaniti has cast Alexander Dupre as McMurphy and Emily Peterson as Nurse Ratched.

Others are Sergio Martinez (Chief Bromden), Sean Andries (Billy Bibbitt), J. Nick Dickert (Cheswick), Nathaniel Hayakawa (Scanlon), Adam Rider (Martini), Ian Armstrong (Ruckly), Ron Blair (Dr. Spivey), Marissa Rice (Nurse Flinn), Marco Davis (Dale Harding), Bethany Mason (Candy Starr) and Tendra Engle (Sandra).

Jon Youkin, Dan Flood, Jordan Wolfer and Caitlin Anderson have been cast as aides, with Christina Chen as a technician and Adam Leonard and Scott Steward as Chronics Nos. 1 and 2.

Fred Crafts can be reached at 338-2575 or fcrafts@guardnet. com.

THEATER PREVIEW

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

What: Stage adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel about life in a pyschiatric ward; directed by Rob Urbaniti

When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and Nov. 13-15 and 21-22; 2 p.m. Nov. 16 (a benefit for Shleter Care)

Where: Robinson Theatre, University of Oregon

How much: $5 to $12, at the Erb Memorial Union (346-4363) and on performance dates at the University Theatre box office (346-4191); at Shelter Care (686-1262) for Nov. 16 benefit performance

Symposium: Ken Kesey's writings will be discussed in a symposium, sponsored by the Departments of Theatre Arts and English in conjunction with the Council for Theatre and Performance, on Nov. 14-16.

CAPTION(S):

Brian Davies / The Register-Guard "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" opens Friday at the Robinson Theatre with (from left) Sergio Martinez as Chief Bromden, Alexander Dupre as McMurphy and Emily Peterson as Nurse Ratched.