Christian Slater Flies for Cuckoo’s Nest???

Still more than a month before this year’s Edinburgh Fringe even begins (See News, 10 Jun 2004), but one of the hot shows already being tipped for a West End transfer is Guy Masterson’s revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dale Wasserman’s stage play based on Ken Kesey’s novel about petty criminal Randall Patrick McMurphy, who makes the mistake of choosing time in an Oregon mental hospital rather than prison. Though still unconfirmed, Hollywood’s Christian Slater (Very Bad Things, Broken Arrow, Feathers, True Romance, Name of the Rose), often compared to a young Jack Nicholson, has been tipped to play McMurphy, the role immortalised by Nicholson in Milos Forman’s 1975 screen version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Slater has also been mentioned in connection with the Broadway transfer of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, which is due to open in New York in October. Meanwhile, those who are confirmed for Cuckoo’s Nest include Britons Frances Barber as McMurphy’s nemesis Nurse Ratched and Mackenzie Crook (The Office, Pirates of the Caribbean) as fellow patient Billy Bibbit.

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