Churchill’s comedy is distinctly of an era, but the keen intelligence and playwriting boldness have preserved the work’s freshness for 21st century theatergoers still bouncing between oppression and liberation. Borden makes a more vivid impression as Gerry, Edward’s proudly promiscuous, noncommittal boyfriend, especially when this rake momentarily stops cruising and goes into full disco mode.īut then “Cloud 9” speaks most profoundly to a modern audience, baffled by too many choices and facing perhaps more formidable internal obstacles than external ones. She adroitly handles the dizzying demands, but she brings a gritty reality to Lin, a chaotic lesbian who, while looking after her unruly child Cathy (played with boisterous abandon by a mustachioed Foxworth), falls in love with all-grown-up Victoria (who in the first act was played by doll).Īs required by the text, a white actor (Chad Borden) plays a black servant (Joshua) in a play that throws into relief the role-playing aspect of identity. (Churchill can never resist looking under the hood of taboos.)Ībigail Marks, who was so memorable in Antaeus’ 2014 production of “Top Girls” (a slightly more manageable Churchill play), has her hands full in Act 1, switching roles between a lovelorn lesbian governess and an independent firecracker of a neighbor who has orgasms while fending off Clive’s advances. (Submissive as she is, she’s desperately in love with David DeSantos’ sharply outlined Harry, a homosexual with a taste for the forbidden.) This note of quiet humanity also infuses Brochtrup’s portrayal of Edward, making it possible for us to feel sympathetic toward a character who ventures out of an unsatisfying gay relationship into an incestuous ménage à trois. His understated theatricality lends poignancy to the ludicrousness of Betty’s marital situation. To call Brochtrup’s Betty a drag performance would be underselling his accomplishment. Jeffrey Schoenberg’s costumes have fun with the fads from two eras that couldn’t be further apart in their gender dress codes.īill Brochtrup, part of the Blighters lineup (the ensemble I saw), is outstanding both as Betty, wife of tyrannical, hypocritical, randy Clive (a gamely booming Bo Foxworth), and adult Edward, gay brother of Victoria (a touching Liza de Weerd). Leigh Allen’s lighting facilitates the rapid shifts in mood, and A. Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s scenic design creates playful backdrops that helpfully organize the high jinks for a small stage. (Rehearsals are complicated enough with a single set of actors jumping from one role to another.) But the artful physical production provides solid ground for the players. This isn’t a play that Antaeus’ practice of “partner casting” is ideally suited for. If the emotional depth is less apparent as disappointment mars the festivities in the longish first half, the increasingly aggressive antics, the musical interludes and the neo-Wildean wit tickle us into thought. This is evident here as the action leaps a hundred years from a British colonial outpost, where a patriarch holds sway and the drums of restive natives can be heard in the distance, to a London park, where characters (in the throes of the sexual revolution) are permitted the freedom to question the assumptions they’ve inherited about their lives.
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