by Caryl Churchill
Directed by Alisa Palmer
A Mirvish Production
at the Panasonic Theatre
January 19-February 21, 2010

   Though not as open to various interpretations as her Top Girls, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 is a colourful, wryly absurdist satire that travels through time for a hundred years (from colonial Africa to Thatcher’s England) in order to reveal some of the most potent psychosexual confusions and stereotypes left to Britain as an inheritance from the Victorian age. Of course, the play cannot help but be less shocking today than it once was (given the radical alterations in sexual mores), but it is amply cheeky and provocative. For one thing, female characters are played by male actors and sometimes vice versa, though the gender exchanges are terminated in the second act; for another, the same characters age only twenty-five years in a century. For instance, the staunch British colonial Clive has an angelic wife, Betty, who is played by a man and a schoolboy son, Edward, who is played by an actress. He also has a very young daughter, Victoria, who is played by a doll! Clive’s black servant, Joshua, is played in black face and native dress by a white actor, and, in this production, Clive’s wife is played a century later by a black actress. In Act Two, Edward has turned into a homosexual gardener maltreated by his promiscuous lover, Gerry, causing him to turn to his sister for sexual comfort and convincing himself that he must be a lesbian! His sister leaves her smug husband to move in with a young lesbian mother named Lin. They are joined by Edward in a curious ménage a trois. If all this seems deliberately daft, it is—by which I mean that Churchill has a real game up her sleeves, though this does veer into agitprop in the second-half. Everyone suffers, it seems for being essentially English, whether it is in an older era or a newer one, but the moderns don’t have Empire on their minds. What they are obsessed with are such things as orgasms, ménages a trois, fidelity and adultery, and gender issues relating to gay, lesbian, and bisexual lifestyles.

   Cloud 9 is farcically cheeky. The very proper colonial family receives a visit from a pith-helmeted explorer named Harry Bagley, who exploits every opportunity that comes his way to seduce Betty, her son, and even the black servant before he marries Betty’s lesbian governess, a woman who yearns without consummation for her mistress. When caught in a homosexual act, Harry claims piteously that he is a helpless victim of “a disease worse than diphtheria.” Later, Clive and a lusty local widow reach orgasm full clothed and with stiff upper lips, but not before Clive declares to Mrs. Saunders in her riding breeches: “Caroline, if you were shot with poisoned arrows, you know what I’d do? I’d fuck your dead body and poison myself.” Such boldly unconventional humour is offset at times by genteel comedy, but rudeness and farce continually ramp up the action.

   To make all the arch madness work, a production needs to absent itself from self-consciousness and make what is ostensibly preposterous seem sophisticated. This is what Alisa Palmer’s production does manage remarkably well for the most part. Visual aspects are handled modestly, with Judith Bowden’s set given just a tinge of colonial Africa, set off by Kevin Lamotte’s gloriously apt lighting. Bowden’s costumes, especially for the women, are superb, turning Evan Buliung’s brilliant Betty into a floating white angel, Megan Follows’ Mrs. Saunders into a rampant sexual huntress in equestrian gear, and Yanna McIntosh’s nineteenth-century Maud (Betty’s mother) into a dragon in a bombastic bustle.

   But everything has to come back to the direction and acting. Alisa Palmer’s direction does well by the farce and satire, but it misses the delicate poignancy in Act Two, where the play crystallizes into a comedy of reinvention that is tinged with some rue. The cast is generally excellent. David Jansen is a nicely fatuous Clive in Act One, though his lumpishly aggressive little Cathy in Act Two is overdone. Blair Williams is hilarious as Harry and seriously silly as Martin, the writer who aims to write a woman’s novel from a woman’s point of view. As black Joshua, Ben Carlson has the right slyly ominous attitude, but he is even better as the insolent hustler Gerry in the second act. Evan Buliung’s Betty is a superb creation, soft in speech, delicate in movement, and convincingly sly about her real adulterous yearning. His gardener is also sweet and soft, yet now there is a vulnerability in a contemporary vein. The only disappointment is Ann-Marie MacDonald, who is not altogether convincing as schoolboy Edward, and who fails to find the pathos later in the mature Betty, though her makeup transformation is stunning. The best performances come from Yanna McIntosh (first as epigrammatic grandmother Maud in her imperious bustle, and then as adult Victoria, thoughtful but conflicted) and by Megan Follows who turns in a triumphant triple as the diffident lesbian governess, the seductive Mrs. Saunders, and the tough, sharp-tongued Lin. What is most amazing about this triple is that the first two roles are played in quick alternation in the first act, without leaving the actress breathless or even a tad out of focus. There can be no doubt that Megan Follows is one of the very top actresses in the land, and why she isn’t snapped up again by Stratford, our premier theatre festival, is a mystery that needs to be solved.

photos: Cylla von Tiedemann

pic 1 (L-R): Ben Carlson (Joshua), David Jansen (Ciive), Evan Buliung (Betty), Ann-Marie McDonald (Edward);
 back row: Megan Follows (Ellen), Yanna McIntosh (Maud)

pic 2 (L-R): Yanna McIntosh (Victoria), Megan Follows (Lin)



Go Back to: Stage Reviews