Westford’s John Manning Featured in "Cuckoo's Nest"

Shana Dirik, Producing Artistic Director of Theater UnCorked – Boston’s newest small theater company – announces the cast for One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, an enhanced staged reading on Saturday, October 13th at 3:30 and 7:30 pm at Margaret Jewett Hall, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Cuckoo’s Nest will star a regional cast of thirteen performers featuring Westford’s John Manning as Scanlon, an inmate in a mid-century psychiatric hospital who was involuntarily committed.

Cuckoo’s Nest will be Manning’s debut performance with Theater UnCorked. He has worked extensively in the Boston area including Gander in Charlotte's Web at the Wheelock Family Theater; Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Rovis in First Love is the Revolution at the Apollinaire Theater; Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady at Stage 284; Mike Dillard in Working at the Concord Umbrella; Ichabod Crane in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow at the Firehouse Theater, and a British Cabinet Minister opposite Tony Nominated actor Brian Murray in Munich, The Battle Not Begun at the Stage 284 Black Box Lab. John currently tours a one man show about the life of Ben Franklin to schools all over New England with the national organization Historical Perspectives for Children. He got his BFA in acting from the University of Connecticut and studied at the Theater Academy in London.

Manning joins Elliott Norton Award nominee Gene Dante (The Rocky Horror Show) as the charismatic “Randle P. McMurphy,” a new inmate who turns the hospital upside down while rallying the other inmates into acts of independence, and Kerry Dowling as “Nurse Ratched,” the tyrannical ward nurse who holds absolute authority over all. Cuckoo’s Nest is led by an all-female production team including Elliot Norton Award winning Director Bobbie Steinbach, IRNE Award winning Producing Artistic Director Shana Dirik and Stage Manager Kailey Bennett.

Full cast includes: Gene Dante as Randle P. McMurphy; Kerry Dowling as Nurse Ratched; Pedro Figueroa as Chief; Jackson Baron as Billy; Ray O’Hare as Harding/Turkle; Robert Saoud* as Cheswick; John Manning as Scanlon; Billy Jenkins as Martini; Taylor Hilliard as Ruckley; Jon Smalls as Warren; Paul Yarborough* as Williams/Spivey; Ivy Ryan as Candy and Becca Lewis as Sandra. *Denotes member of Actors Equity Association.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is Dale Wasserman’s 1963 Tony Award-winning adaptation of the novel by Ken Kesey. The play takes audiences on an emotional roller coaster inside a mid-century mental institution as McMurphy and Ratched square off in a high stakes game of cat-and-mouse that leads to a showdown of shocking proportion. In a world where following the rules is the only way to prove mental sanity, some rules were made to be broken. The New York Times called Cuckoo’s Nest “Scarifying and powerful.”

Tickets:

Tickets for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are $35.00 per person. Tickets can be purchased online at www.theateruncorked.com

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC.