By William Wolf

CLOUD 9  Send This Review to a Friend

So much has happened in the realm of gender bending since Caryl Churchill’s ultra creative 1979 play “Cloud 9” appeared, yet as the new production by the Atlantic Theater Company demonstrates, it still holds up as an entertaining excursion into satire of sexual mores and practices. The British ruling class in Victorian times in colonial Africa becomes the target in Act I. The action in Act II has some of the same characters evolving (the author has no concern for accurate time frames) in 1979, when modern change is explored.

Since the play has much to say about the lives of women, it was hailed as part of the feminist revolution when it first shook up the theater scene. At this late date one can take account of history and enjoy it anew for the author’s inventiveness and provocative casting dictates, followed by director James Macdonald in this freshly imaginative version.

Some of the casting defies gender. In the first act Clarke Thorell plays Clive, a stiff-upper-lip Brit, who is married to Betty, and in the second act he amusingly plays a little girl. Clive’s wife Betty is played by a man, Chris Perfetti. Clive’s son Edward, liking dolls and clearly emerging as gay, is portrayed by a woman, Brooke Bloom. In the second act Bloom does a striking acting turn as Betty, now middle aged and trying to find herself (Again, Churchill doesn’t worry about time sequences).

This is a highly versatile cast. Lucy Owen, for example, appears as Maud, Betty’s dour, no-nonsense-mother in Act I. Then in the contemporary Act II time frame, she is seen delightfully as Victoria, who in Act I was an infant represented by a floppy doll, and is now skillfully convincing as an attractive woman discovering a lesbian identity and enjoying a new sense of freedom.

The casting diversity is in tune with the sexual diversity playing out the first act’s colonial Africa setting. Betty has the hots for a good friend of her husband, explorer Harry Bagley, suavely enacted by John Sanders, who also dallies with young Edward. Meanwhile, Clive, wants sex with the widow Mrs. Saunders (Izzie Steele). The joke is how everyone is doing what they shouldn’t under the cloak of supposed propriety. In the contrasting Ac t II, sexual proclivities continue, but the times have changed.

In Act I the colonial era itself is spoofed via the character of Joshua, the manservant, portrayed impeccably by Sean Dugan, a white actor (Churchill’s playfulness again), giving indications of restless, resentful natives. In Act II Dugan is back as Gerry, a homosexual finding various liaisons. Now Edward, who gets involved with Gerry, is played by Chris Perfetti.

I find the first act more satisfying than the second, mainly because it is funnier, while Act II is more serious in making its polemical points. Importantly, the play is performed in the round in this offering, which creates greater intimacy with the audience.

However, the refiguring of the Atlantic Theater space for this occasion is awfully uncomfortable in its graduated seating on backless benches with even less leg-room than one finds these days in airplane economy sections. But, on balance, I have to say that seeing “Cloud 9” was worth the discomfort. At the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, 336 West 20th Street. Reviewed October 12, 2015.

  

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