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Sam Winer is a Liverpudlian who was evacuated to Shropshire as a schoolboy during the Second World War and had little formal education after the age of 12. He had his introduction to the theatre in 1957 when the boarders at Mangere immigration hostel decided to put on a play ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, by W.W. Jacobs. They made Winer Director and gave him a part in the melodrama, which was so successful it ran for four nights instead of its intended two.
In 1978 Winer produced ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for the first time in New Zealand with an all-amateur cast. Its solid five-week season made it one of the longest-running amateur productions in Auckland. In 1981 Winer returned with the production, in His Majesty’s Theatre, which received exceptional reviews.
Now, 27 years later, Winer revives the play at The Stables Theatre in Ellerslie. He wants to introduce the wayward McMurphy, along with the colourful characters residing in a 1950’s psychiatric hospital and present the horrors of a by-gone era, to a new generation while adding a new perspective to returning viewers.
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