As the play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” begins, it’s immediately clear who’s in charge of the psychiatric ward where the play takes place: Nurse Ratched.

In her crisp white uniform, perfectly pinned white hat and sensible, white shoes, she rules the ward — patients, orderlies and doctors — with a cool discipline and a matronly manner.

Matronly, that is, if you can imagine a mother like the cruel, manipulative Nurse Ratched.

The play, presented by Cascades Theatrical Company, opens tonight at Greenwood Playhouse (see “If you go”).

“The play is set in ‘a state mental hospital somewhere in the Pacific Northwest,’ but everyone knows it’s the state hospital in Salem,” said director Jill Stinson-Littlejohn.

The play is based on Oregon author Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, which was made into a film that won five Academy Awards in 1975, including Best Picture and Best Actor awards for its two stars, Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched, and Jack Nicholson, who played Ratched’s patient and nemesis, Randle McMurphy.

It’s McMurphy who upends Ratched’s strict routine and sense of order. He begins the moment he arrives in the ward.

Before arriving, McMurphy had been serving time on a work farm, and his record included charges of drunkenness, assault, statutory rape and a lot of gambling.

“What happened was I got in a couple hassles down at the work farm and the court ruled that I’m a psychopath,” McMurphy, also a war veteran, tells his fellow patients as he arrives. “And do you think I’m gonna argue with that?” he says, winking. “If it gets me out of those damn pea fields I’ll be whatever their little heart desires, be it psychopath or mad dog or werewolf, because I don’t care if I never see another weeding hoe to my dying day.”

The other “loonys,” as McMurphy calls his fellow patients and new friends, include Billy, “a young man with a mother complex,” Stinson-Littlejohn said. Another is Martini, a war vet who today would probably be diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Scanlon is fixated on blowing things up, Cheswick seems to live in a constant state of fear, and Harding is the unofficial leader of the patients’ council.

“(Harding is) extremely intelligent,” the director said. “But he has issues with the feminine side of himself.”

Early on, McMurphy sits in on a group therapy session that seems, especially by modern standards, less than therapeutic. McMurphy is horrified.

“Say, buddy, is that the way these little meetings usually go?” he asks Harding afterward. “Bunch of chickens at a pecking party?”

McMurphy explains further: “The flock gets sight of a speck of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it, see? Till there’s nothing left but blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it’s their turn.

“And you want to know who picks the first peck? It’s that old nurse, that’s who,” McMurphy says.

He decides to take her down, and he lays down money on who’s going to break first: him or Nurse Ratched.

“I’m wagering that I can put a burr up that nurse’s bloomers within a week,” McMurphy says.

Throughout the play, fellow patient Chief Bromden narrates and comments on what’s happening in the hospital. Though catatonic when people are around, he faces the audience and speaks to his father. Through these monologues, we get a picture of Chief’s inner world but also strange, poetic meditations on what happens in the ward.

Bromden’s a Columbia River Indian, among the people whose ancestral fishing lands were lost when Celilo Falls were submerged by The Dalles Dam in 1957. As Harding says, “I believe that tribe is now defunct.”

The cast of CTC’s production of “Cuckoo’s Nest” includes Todd Hanson as Randle McMurphy, Hilda Beltran Wagner as Nurse Ratched and Rob Jacobs as Chief Bromden.

Hanson brings a unique energy to the part of McMurphy, not just a rehashing of Nicholson’s famous performance.

“I think he is McMurphy,” Stinson-Littlejohn said. “He is McMurphy in the nicest way. He is outgoing, he is caring about the people he’s with. He’s made McMurphy his own.

“He’s a complete contrast to Ratched. With Todd 100 percent what-you-see-is-what-you-get. If he’s smiling, it means everything a smile should mean.”

The director said Beltran Wagner has her work cut out for her as Nurse Ratched. Stinson-Littlejohn played the role herself in a 1996 run of the show at Central Oregon Community College, and she knows how draining it can be to play a character as complex and villainous as Nurse Ratched.

The director told the actor that she may get booed at curtain calls.

“To me the boos and hisses are a sign you’ve played her well,” she said.

The director warned that parents should take care if they plan to bring children to the show. There are adult themes and strong language. She said for those younger than 16, parents should “really give it some thought.”

But for adults, she said, it’s a show that shouldn’t be missed.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to celebrate Oregon,” Stinson-Littlejohn said. “Not only because Kesey wrote it but because of the relationship with the Columbia River tribes.”

Thinking about the play, the director said she feels some relief knowing that those who are mentally ill — and those who may not be mentally ill but still don’t fit perfectly into society — are no longer treated the way they were then.

People should see “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” she said, “I guess also to be grateful that we’re not still stuck in the ’50s.”

If you go

What: Cascades Theatrical Company presents “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 28

Where: Greenwood Playhouse, 148 N.W. Greenwood Ave.

Cost: $20, $15 seniors, $12 students

Contact: 541-389-0803 or www.cascadestheatrical.org

Opening night: Tonight’s opening night reception will take place before and after the show, with appetizers and drinks. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.