Jason Donovan says “a lot of roads” have led him to Randle McMurphy, the charming, unruly psychiatric patient at the centre of Ken Kesey's novel. The actor, speaking from Manchester where he is currently playing Coach Bolton in High School Musical, said he had never worked so hard on a script. “It's a monster,” he said of the amount of dialogue and work.
Donovan said he is deliberately avoiding Jack Nicholson's Oscar-winning performance in the 1975 film, instead drawing on Kesey's novel. “I just threw caution to the wind. The biggest fear is fear itself. So I went, well, let's go. You know, no risk, no magic.”
The role has taken on added weight after the death of his father, actor Terence Donovan, in July at age 90. “There's parts of my dad in this character ... the craziness of this guy. I sort of channel a little bit of my father in that role.”
Terence Donovan also performed at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre, where his son will now appear, in Breaker Morant in 1978 and Certified Male in 1999. “The whole thing has, not weight, but it's a wonderful bookend, really,” Donovan said. He first heard the production was being discussed in 2023, when he was in Melbourne for The Rocky Horror Show.
Donovan, who has lived in the UK longer than in Australia, described the story's themes of conformity, rebellion and the danger of institutions. He said Australia felt “in focus” compared with his adopted home, which he likened to a Turner painting.