One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

To the most-talked about show on the Fringe, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, after the press were finally been allowed in.

Of course it's not necessarily been talked about for all the right reasons. First director Guy Masterson walked out amid talk of "creative differences", then opening night was delayed twice after star Christian Slater contracted first chicken pox, then a secondary infection.

There's no sign of that now. His performance as Randle P McMurphy is as energetic and compelling as that of Jack Nicholson in the classic film. The Office's Mackenzie Crook shines, too, as the shy, stammering Billy Bibbitt.

But mostly it's comedians who have taken over the asylum: Stephen K Amos and Felix Dexter are the orderlies; and other inmates include Owen O'Neill, Ian Coppinger, Dave Johns, Brendan Dempsey and an almost unrecognisable Phil Nichol as the middle-aged dullard Charles Atkins Cheswick III.

Orderlies Stephen K Amos and Felix Dexter

Lucy Porter has just three lines as the coy sidekick to the oppressive Nurse Ratched (Frances Barber in suitably icy mode) which she¸s been cheerfully recreating for audiences at her own show, while Lizze Roper and Katherine Jakeways are good-time girls brought in for an illicit party.

While there's fun to be had as McMurphy energises the moribund inmates, this is mainly a deadly serious piece with plenty to say about the nature of society. What happens when the rebel challenges the structured status quo that the patients were complicit in maintaining? Yet every comedian rises to the occasion, with not one weak link in this engrossing show.

You can't get tickets, of course, the Edinburgh run long having sold out on the strength of Slater's name alone. But it is previewing in the West End from September 3 and it's sure to be a hot ticket there, too. I can certainly recommend it.