The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 228

CALENDAR STAGE ti- fl 4-'1 Ilk fjt l' P' ti tot 1::::::::::::) 0 1iwoouii6s -isbi 1 4 4 i 7vVgedt i': :4 1::4: cf'''''' 1) :1 1 ''A11 4 f' 4: :1:::: if 1 A 1r i i 7 A 4114 460- 14 1t' I '''-''0' 3:: Paul Eiding left prays a young girl Mamie Mosiman a young boy in Caryl Churchill's "Cloud Nine" n--t 77277-- 7 FLYING HIGH ON 'CLOUD NINE' IV Tir YArl when independence is declared? A new equality? Or back to the old controls? We're given a lot to think about Yet Churchill's business is showing people not drawing up a program for humanity Nobody in the play is quite a stick even the colonial father who treats his disappointing son with surprising patience In the second play a young lesbian confesses that she's desperate to get her daughter into school and a male hustler notes that he sometimes comes to the park just for the walk Our playwright is certain enough of her people to give them room to breathe and this enhances the freedom of the piece We also enjoy it as a game a charade With most games the description on the inside of the box makes the action sound more complicated than it works out in the playing And so with "Cloud Nine" For instance The reader may wonder how a Victorian story and a story set in modern London can share characters Churchill explains it in a wonderfully high-handed way Although 100 years have passed for England 11 for the characters it is only 25 years later" Biologic-al years that is The characters are living in the 1980s but they've only aged 25 arrived at the next biological stop in their lives How can this be? Well we can defend Churchill's device as a symbolic statement of how slow the emotional growth rate of the human race is as compared to the fast flip of cultural fashion Or we can say that the real time of the rust play was the Victorian age that looking back one's childhood always seems to have been with its simple yeses and especially) no's One of the intellectual strengths of the play is that one can play all kinds of mind games with it later But in fact the device of the overlapping characters doesn't have to be defended In the theater it seems perfectly natural to see our friends from the first act proceed with their lives in a setting that just happens to be 100 years later Nor are there any practical objections to another of Churchill's devices the idea of having some of the female characters played by males and vice versa It makes good thematic sense for example that little Edward in the first play should be played by a female It reminds us that he doesn't feel like a "real boy" inside And the little girl in the second play obviously does so why not have a man play her? But again it's not the explanation that makes the device work It's the moment-to-moment sharpness of Churchill's writing abetted by the moment to-moment belief of the superbly versatile cast Their versatility isn't quite appreciated until the curtain call when you realize how few of them there are The actors make two wonderful companies in one and you want to summon them to the footlights Bannon Paul Eiding Laurence Guittard Nancy Lane Christina Pickles Marnie Mosiman Charles Steak "Cloud Nine" left me on cloud nine If the description sounds at all interesting the reader is assured that the experience itself is far more so See it and well talk 0 pomopt osom Immo ow- wow Omar lomoNN kkone ant A 7 2 g' 2 0 tn I knows himself to be desperately impure And sometimes wretchedly versatile The distance between the characters' ideals and their actual behavior embarrasses them and convulses the more so I think in that Churchill doesn't deride the ideals Her characters believe with all their hearts in the unreal roles they're trying to fulfil That's why it's so painfully funny when their hormones betray them The second play happens a century later in post-swinging London The characters here are free to be whoever they want to be who is that? The problems in this play are subtle and ironic ones What if a gay man wants to make a home for a younger gay man but is rejected because the second man finds the situation tmmasculine? What if a "liberated" wife hesitating about whether to take a job out of town gets accused by her husband of trying to make him look like an old-fashioned chauvinist? Churchill obviously prefers the sexual freedom of the 1980s to the sexual repression of the Victorians To find one's pleasure she seems to say is to begin to find one's like angels each of us is a separate creation But she's equally aware that when sex becomes something you "do" with anybody like lunch a certain flatness is felt That's a problem for her modern characters "Cloud Nine's" deepest topic isn't sex but power: the husband's over the wife the home country's over the colony a strong theme in the first play) the parent's over the child What happens By DAN SULLIVAN 6 loud Nine" is the freshest and most original show of the theater several seasons Perhaps because of that it's a hard show to capture on paper If the reader were a friend I'd say: "Just go see it Then we'll talk" Unfortunately I have to try to describe the thing If what follows sounds contorted or difficult don't be put off Think of a tanager in a tree of a fish showing you its tail It's that quick and free A word of caution first "Cloud Nine" isn't for those who think ttiat there's too much talk about sex in the 'theater these days Playwright Caryl Churchill's characters definitely have the subject on the brain (her Victorian characters as well as her modern ones) and their words are well the words people use Some of the passages are as frank as anything in "Oh! Calcutta!" once described by the New Yorker as "a show that purports to give us a refreshing view of sex and does not" "Cloud Nine" does I think A human view too But if you're tired of hearing about the subject stay home How to convey the show's form? It feels like a musical revue perhaps because choreographer Tommy Tune directed the New York production on which Don Amendolia's staging at the LA Stage Company West is based But it only has a couple of songs If it moves like a 'musical it's actually a play Two plays I Paul Biding also plays an African servant to a British colonial family in the play at LA Stage Co West in fact with oddly overlapping characters and a common fret: What to do about sex? The first play is set in a British outpost in Africa circa 1880 Everyone in this story knows what is personally expected of him by God and Our Dear Queen Father is to be resolute Mother is to be delicate Son is to be manly (even if he likes to play with dolls) Visiting Explorer is to be dauntless Resident Governess is to be helpful Everyone is to be pure That's the problem Everyone also cd 0 ca) ra 0 c6.