The University Drama Department's presentation of Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill is a bizarre production that tells the story of a family's sexual self-realization, first in repression in Victorian-era Africa, and then in the liberated climate of late 1970s London. Those on the look-out for gimmicks in any form take note: there are oodles here.
Actors play across gender lines, portray at least two characters each, and though a century separates the first and second acts chronologically, the characters age only 25 years. In the second act, they talk reminiscently about colonial Africa while sitting on park benches listening to punk music. On top of that, the characters that appear in both acts (Betty and her children, Victoria and Edward) are played by different people each time. These aberrations are well executed overall, though -- except for a few minutes at the beginning of the second act, they caused no real confusion.
At first glance, the assignment of actors apparently irrespective of gender seems excessively politically correct, but as the play progresses, an agenda emerges, to the distress of those of us who don't care to be spoon-fed gender theory.
The play focuses largely on the conflict between traditional European sexual mores and the brutal, libidinous substratum underlying the human experience. This is expressed in the contrast between the British colonial family and the untamed "dark continent" sprawling around them. Delightfully, in the transition to the second act, the wilds of Africa are replaced by the sexual liberation movement and punk culture. The conflict has shifted; the battleground is internal now.
In contrast to Act I's fuzzy exploration of moral standards, Act II expresses something more satisfyingly complex: the crisis of culture bereft of standards, the problem of "liberated" humanity no longer having any clear idea of what to feel or what to want. One character's exclamation, "I can't work it out!" individualizes the common experience of our uprooted age.
Occasionally the performance feels rushed, especially in moments of violence, which seem insufficiently introduced and sometimes a little unfelt. Furthermore, these violent spurts occur too frequently to be surprising. The dialogue of the first act feels a shade too blunt to be period, and the constant vulgarity -- of subject matter in the first act and language in the second -- robs the play of much of the significance it might otherwise evoke. Worse, it makes the occasional scenes of subtle tension, which had the potential to be fascinating, seem rather flaccid.
But the biggest pitfall the play hits is simply overacting. Though believable most of the time, the actors slip into caricature too frequently to go unnoticed. One player in particular has been severely miscast, pressed into two roles both inclined to be overacted.
Cloud 9 is presented in the round, and to the actors' credit, they handle this difficult form very capably. They also do commendably well at distinguishing the two characters they play; the diversity of characterization they exhibit is impressive and, on the whole, convincing. The performance is engaging and entertaining, and seems shorter than its run time -- a sign of a successful presentation.
The play's shift in time may seem like a turn-off on paper, but in practice it was unobtrusive and even had an odd hypothetical beauty -- the idea of aging at only a fourth the rate of the world around you is part of the play's appeal.
This is not a play for the squeamish, nor for those with opinions easily swayed by transparently instructive theater. But harder-shelled audience members should have no trouble overlooking Cloud 9's occasional weak spots to find a show that is enjoyable. The excessive vulgarity and mature subject matter, naturally, make it a perfect fit for the college environment.
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