Among the astonishing outburst of new American cinema in the 1970s, Milos Forman's multi-Oscar-winning "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" offered most Japanese moviegoers their first encounter with the peculiarly piercing eyes of Jack Nicholson, who played its central character, Randle P. McMurphy.
Now, almost 40 years on, theatergoers here can savor this masterpiece anew in a splendid stage production by the director/playwright/actor Masahiko Kawahara, with 31-year-old screen star Shun Oguri bringing to Nicholson's role a charismatic take on troublemaking all his own— together with a trendy cap in place of a beanie.
Back in 1962, Ken Kesey's anti-establishment novel of the same name had been — along with the likes of Joseph Heller's antiwar epic "Catch-22" (1961) and Hubert Selby Jr.'s taboo-busting "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (1964) — iconic to the growing 1960s counterculture that spanned the Atlantic, and to this day it remains one of the most-banned books ever in the United States.