Comment on this story What: Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill When: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m. thru Sept. 18 Where: Black Box Theatre Cost: $5 Thursdays, $15 general, $10 students and seniors. Call 909-9300 for reservations.

‘Cloud 9’ shakes the core of expectations

by Paige M. Travis

Cloud 9 is a study in visceral responses. Provoking and discomforting, Caryl Churchill’s 20-year-old dark comedy makes the viewer glad to be mostly hidden in darkness from the bright stage lights. Rife with sexual frankness and social commentary, this is exactly the kind of play the Actor’s Co-op tackles with no fear or hesitation. It’s reminiscent of Christopher Durang’s wacky plays that push the political correctness envelope, and the films of director Mike Leigh, who portrays fictional British families in such trying and tumultuous situations that a viewer’s artistic interest is compromised by his desire to just shut his hysterical characters up.

In his director’s notes, Zack Allen calls Cloud 9 a “mood piece” in which “sometimes the words of the play are less important than the environment of the words.” The mood the players collude to project is taut with conflict and contradiction from the first scene. Act I introduces us to the family of Clive and Betty, Victorian landowners in the colonial Africa of 1880. Instantly, it’s hard to take them seriously: they are a caricature of the nuclear family and traditional gender roles, as Betty is played by male actor Lee Lenox, who flits across the stage, flips his hair and bats his eyelashes like an uber-feminine belle. Buddy Lucas matches Lenox’s extremity as Clive, the manly head of household who wields power over everything he surveys, including his native houseboy Joshua (Jacques DuRand), a loyal servant who has disowned his family in favor of the white landlords.

Churchill immediately tilts our expectations; nothing here is how it should be, and what does “should be” mean anyway? The little boy Edward (Jenny Ballard) is high-strung and effeminate, much to his parents’ shame. Clive’s friend Harry (Jim Conn) returns from a wilderness expedition, seemingly the portrait of masculinity. But he’s carrying on an affair with Betty in the shadow of having molested her young son (who still has lingering feelings for his “uncle”). To top it all off, Harry is game for a quickie in the back with Joshua. Adultery, homosexuality, pedophilia and then some are thrown at us rapid fire, and how we respond depends on our own experiences and politics. On Cloud 9’s twisted scale, each is just another notch on the ruler. Progressively, the play asks, Is this wrong? What about this? You are left to answer with your gut and second guess with your brain.

So, in the context of this topsy-turvy world, our disarmed expectations of gender roles and the general rules of sex allow anything to be possible. And all that’s possible—and potentially abrasive to our sensibilities—happens in the extreme. (We’re not talking NC-17 or even Eyes Wide Shut, but the language is strong and direct.) Behind the veneers of proper behavior, lust runs rampant on the wild African plains. Clive engages in a passionate tryst with his neighbor Mrs. Saunders, a free-spirited, recently widowed woman who takes refuge with this strange family. Mandi Lawson does double duty as the unconventional and independent Mrs. Saunders and the mousy, nervous governess Ellen. In each turn, Lawson exudes a stunning adventurousness; her willingness to throw herself emotionally and physically into every line and action even stands out among these other brazen characters.

Taken to the extreme, Churchill’s message is clear: despite society’s insistence on certain rules, people can be expected to break them. Here, the cracked boundaries are pushed to the point of farce. And it’s a lucky thing—we need laughter to distance ourselves from the actions on stage. These Victorians are dressed for propriety, but their behavior is anything but proper. Sarah Campbell, as Betty’s extremely proper mother Maud, provides the best relief through her deadpan delivery of ironic and surprising one-liners.

I imagine that viewers of 20 years ago would have been more shocked by Churchill’s characters’ sexually explicit language and prurient motives. To me, the feelings—or lack thereof—behind the actions are most offensive. Act I’s Victorians are fairly easy to laugh at and dismiss; they are silly and desperate, except for Lucas, whose unbreakable command over his domain is intense and intimidating. But it turns out that Act I is only a prologue for the play’s second half, in which there’s no farce to lighten the mood.

Act II fast-forwards us to the present day, although the characters have only aged 20 years. An adult Edward and his younger sister Victoria (who was represented by a baby doll in Act I) live in London. Edward (now played by Lenox) and his lover Gerry (DuRand) have conflicting ideas of domesticity. Vic has grown up into a liberated, professional woman who reads while her son plays in the park. Her friend Lin (Lawson) is a divorced mother of young Cathy (played for hilarious effect by Lucas in a curly blond wig).

Because these people are young, modern, stylish, their concerns of love and family seem more immediate, but the first act has thrown our expectations into a tailspin. Is it OK for Lin (Lawson) to hit on Victoria, who is married with a child? Are Gerry’s anonymous sexual encounters better or worse than Harry’s dalliances with Joshua? Even the introduction of women’s liberation doesn’t seem to simplify matters; it only complicates people’s choices and relationships. Vic’s husband Martin (Conn) isn’t a well-developed character, but he earns some sympathy as a confused modern male, driven to take care of his family and still leave room for his wife’s independence. But his frustration erupts in a tirade—all yelling and no answers. Those will only come, Churchill seems to say, not within the text of a play, but from within each of us.

September 2, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 36 © 2004 Metro Pulse