How do you create present day New Orleans, a 1970s psychiatric ward and Native American dream sequences for our In The Round staging? We asked Ben Stones, the set and costume designer of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Time to read 1 Minute
Author The Old Vic
Published 29/04/2026
It started with the novel
At director Clint Dyer’s request, Ben began his design process by not just reading Dale Wasserman’s script, but also the novel it’s based on by Ken Kesey. ‘Clint had an extraordinary vision for the show that was more in keeping with the content and atmosphere of the book’, Ben says, citing the nightmarish passages in the novel where Chief Bromden describes The Combine, his term for the machine that’s controlling everyone, inside and outside the ward.
The novel was also the source of the ‘thematic fixation on green’ reflected in the patients’ costumes and accents in the set.
Designing In The Round is like ‘theatre in HD’
The Old Vic has been reconfigured In The Round since September last year. This presents challenges and opportunities for designers. ‘I have to think about any person or object in 360 degrees’, Ben notes, ‘like theatre in HD’.
For Ben, this production isn’t just In The Round, ‘it’s immersive’.
‘Our design extends and grows organically out of the architecture of the theatre. I’m excited to see an audience be immersed in the story and be closer to these characters than usual.’
Meeting in Congo Square
One thematic reference point director Clint Dyer was keen to bring into this production was Congo Square, a public place in New Orleans where Indigenous communities and African Americans gathered to dance, sing, trade and build connections.
Ben describes this location as ‘a circular democratic space for play and fun’. Projection by Gino Ricardo Green directly references the square’s tiled floor which, in the set design, ‘morphs seamlessly from the joy of now into the antiseptic 1970s medical common room’.
Returning to The Old Vic
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a return to The Old Vic for Ben. He designed set and costume for Sylvia when it premiered at The Old Vic in 2018.
‘I saw a lot of shows when I was a student at The Old Vic, so I still pinch myself that I get to work in wonderful spaces like this. And the support from the Producing team has been extraordinary. They believed in our design and made it work.’
