[title]
★★★★
A truism I’ve seen applied to Caryl Churchill’s 1979 breakthrough play Cloud 9 is that it’s ‘dated’ and in a sense it is: it’s relatively apparent that it was written towards the end of the twentieth century. But that’s like saying Shakespeare’s works are dated because you can date them to the Elizabethan era: yes, obviously, but that doesn’t mean they have nothing to say to us.
Dominic Cooke’s revival follows Lyndsey Turner’s recent-ish Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Top Girls in taking a Churchill play originally done on a modest budget and throwing the kitchen sink at it. And part of the reason Cooke’s revival feels so fresh is it has a set from Miriam Buether that’s so jaw-dropping it could never feel hackneyed: I can’t really describe the second half set without spoiling, but the sight greeting us upon our return to the theatre after an extended interval is a proper coup de théâtre and no mistake.
The first half, I can talk about. The set is a lush jungle surrounded by a giant, gilded frame with old fashioned red theatre drapes, the setting is an unnamed African country at the height of the late 19th century Scramble for Africa. The story focuses on a sexually repressed (but very horny) English colonial household: the shadow of Monty Python looms large over the antics of priapic colonial administrator Clive (Sam Troughton) and his febrile family, many of them played by cross-dressing actors. It’s very funny: as Clive’s wife Betty, Stewart Thompson pronounces the word ‘piano’ in such a dementedly plummy way you can feel your gene pool contracting.
Churchill says some stuff Monty Python didn’t, however: the whole half amounts to a ferocious takedown of the Victorians via the playwright’s suggestion that the zenith of British colonialism was fuelled by sexual frustration and gender confusion: seething Englishmen, not entirely clear what they’re supposed to be doing out in the world, taking out their resentment on women, Africans and ultimately themselves. Churchill isn’t saying the Empire could have been avoided if only the Victorians had had Pride. But she is saying the Victorian upper classes were so fucked up that the repercussions have echoed through the world for a century and more.
Although in Cloud 9 it’s actually only 25 years, kind of. The play moves to 1979, but for the three members of the colonial family who return, recast, it has only been a quarter century. This is the more dated bit in the sense that while the first half was always a parody of the past, the second was intended to be ‘now’, which it surely no longer is. But it was pretty good timing: a couple of years after punk, at the end of the most significant period of British decolonisation. Churchill is considerably less agitprop here, and considerably more hopeful, positing the era as something like the last gasp for the harms inflicted by the Victorians.
If it doesn’t hit home with the vehemence of the first half, it feels both impressively prescient about contemporary sexuality (it’s clear Betty’s son Edward – played by Thompson again – is basically trans, even if that language doesn’t exist) and impressively withering about sexually manipulative leftwing men. Churchill developed the play with her original cast and the second half clearly benefits from queer lived experiences.
So yeah sure, it’s dated a bit. But we’re given plenty of compensation via that astounding set change. And what a cast! Although Cooke’s production could afford to ditch the doubled roles, that’s half of what makes it fun. Almost everyone is a double scene-stealer, but props to Troughton for shifting from loony tunes uber Brit Clive to bolshy toddler Cathy in the second (this feels pointed). Eloka Ivo is terrific as menacingly smooth African servant Joshua and then later cynical gay lothario Gerry. Rebecca Humphries is superb in a trio of roles: gung ho posho Mrs Saunders and closeted Irish governess Ellen in the first half (the fact the same actor plays both is a running gag) and Lin, a tough, liberated lesbian in the second.
Churchill is still going strong at 88, but she doesn’t write ‘em like this anymore: her modern plays are short, neutron-dense works of shimmering intellect. Cloud 9 is more human than all that, a little more tied to its era, but no less genius, I think – and this is an immaculate revival.
National Theatre, Lyttelton, until Jan 13 2027. Buy tickets here.
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