Cloud Nine
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Cititour.com Review
Gender roles. Sexual fluidity. Racial politics. These may be the headlines of the 2015, but the British dramatist Caryl Churchill tackled them with not just prescience, but fierce intelligence and offbeat humor in her 1978 masterpiece “Cloud Nine,” which is receiving its first major New York revival in a splendid production at the Atlantic Theater Company. So splendid in fact, that you can often forget that Churchill’s frequent partner-in-innovation, director James MacDonald, has made us forego the Atlantic’s usual comfy seats and placed us on barely-padded wooden benches so he can stage the play in the round (for reasons I can’t fully explain).
One thing MacDonald hasn’t altered in Churchill’s nearly-groundbreaking edict to have characters played by performers of different genders and races than their own, often to stunning effect. For example Act I, set in colonial Africa during the Victorian era, the semi-repressed housewife Betty is stirringly played to perfection by Chris Perfetti; her budding homosexual son is embodied beautifully by Brooke Bloom; and the black African servant Joshi is played with thorough conviction by the whiter-than-white Sean Dugan. Then again, Joshi claim, he wants to been seen with a soul as his white master, the honorable Clive (a fine Clarke Thorell). But then again, little in this household as it seems, as we realize by act’s end, not Joshi’s loyalty nor the “manliness” of Clive’s best friend, explorer Harry Bagley (the dashing John Sanders). In playing out her almost typical English melodrama, as much for laughs as for thought, Churchill makes us reexamine our notions of almost everything.
The second act returns to some of these themes, and here, Churchill spins some more twists. While the setting is London, 1979, Betty, Edward, and baby sister Victoria are all there – a mere 25 years older, and now played by other actors. Bloom is stunning, again, as the now-liberated yet still-stodgy Betty; Perfetti is touching as Edward, who is longing for domestic bliss with the boorish Jerry (Dugan), and the excellent Lucy Owen – who superbly played Betty’s ultra-proper mother in Act I – is the grown Victoria, unhappily married to the self-satisfied Martin (Sanders), engaging in bisexuality with friend Lin (Izzie Steele), and completely unsure of her place in the world. It’s her struggle, as well as Betty’s, that grounds this section, which while shorter than Act I can feel a tad longer.
Cloud Nine may not be a total 10, but it’s an important work that we should be grateful we’ve been given another chance to experience. Oh, and if you remember, bring a seat cushion.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
https://atlantictheater.org/playevents/cloudnine
Cast
Brooke Bloom, Sean Dugan, Lucy Owen, Chris Perfetti, John Sanders, Izzie Steele, Clarke Thorell
Open/Close Dates
Opening 9/16/2015
Closing 11/1/2015
Box Office
866-811-4111
Theatre Info
Atlantic Theater Company/Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
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