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Blake High students take flight in 'Cuckoo'

Theater students at the school give life to classic characters, including Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson in the award-winning movie.

DOWNTOWN - Call them crazy. Students in Blake High School's theater department won't mind. They've been embracing insanity for the production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which continues tonight and Saturday.

For weeks, the 18-student cast has practiced stuttering, blank stares and violent struggles for the play based on Ken Kesey's novel. Stagehands transformed the theater into a mental institution, complete with Lawrence Welk music, for therapeutic value. Costume designers dressed actors in bathrobes and slippers, crisp nurse uniforms and bawdy biker leather.

The play centers on patients who spend their days in a drug-induced stupor, slavish to the will of head nurse Mildred Ratched. That is until the arrival of Randle Patrick McMurphy, a petty thief who thinks he has found a way out of a hard labor sentence.

"The court ruled I'm a psychopath," McMurphy tells the other patients upon meeting them.

McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson in the award-winning 1975 movie version, is played by senior Eric Burgess. He fills the stage with his boisterous, hyped-up testosterone. He's both obnoxious and lovable, and despite his down-to-earth simplicity, sees right through the system.

Group therapy, he reveals, is a "bunch of chickens at a pecking party."

Burgess, who has a long resume of Blake productions, says the role is perfect for him.

"I'm a goofball," he said. His only struggle? Belting out a raucous laugh. "I'm a giggle-type guy."

Barrie McLain, 16, admits playing straitlaced Nurse Ratched was more of a challenge for her. A musical theater major in her first theater role at Blake, McLain's high energy was hard to subdue. Ratched, she said, is her polar opposite.

"I'm all over the place," McLain said "She's so rigid."

Still, she manages to pull it off. "You want to be punished - need it," she forcefully tells the patients.

McLain saw the Broadway play with her grandparents on a trip to New York.

"It was just this mindblowing experience," she said. "I had so much compassion for McMurphy and Billy. To hear that I had to be the one to kill them was hard."

Eric Brazeal, 17, plays the shy, insecure Billy Bibbit, who has stuttered since his first word: "Ma Ma Mama." Brazeal has performed at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and Gorilla Theatre and with the Tampa Bay Opera.

"Billy is the kid who has never had a care in this world except to impress his mom," said Brazeal, who also stuttered as a child.

Tim Cote, 18, plays Chief Bromden, a mute until McMurphy breaks through to him. To practice for the role, he listened to Pink Floyd's song Brain Damage. He found the lyrics inspiring: There's someone in my head and it's not me.

The production marks Blake's last of the year. Director James Rayfield chose a play with a smaller cast than usual but a bigger name.

Rayfield has been teaching acting for more than 30 years. Seven years ago, he helped design the theater magnet program at Blake, where he teaches acting. His program primes students for theater colleges and careers.

Brazeal plans to spend the next few summers in Los Angeles in the hopes of breaking into the film industry. Burgess is headed for the School for Film and Television in New York City.

"That's where you get discovered," he said.

- Elisabeth Dyer can be reached at 226-3321 or edyer@sptimes.com

Blake High School's theater department presents One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest at 7 tonight and Saturday in the school's Don Thompson Theatre, 1701 N Boulevard. Tickets are $7. For information, call 272-3422.