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

0 Comments | Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), November, 2003

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...