About This Show
Here we are in 1880 darkest but British Africa as portrayed in old movies, plays and novels. Only with a difference. Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 is a parody and spoof of the Victorian Empire and its rigid attitudes especially towards sex. The cast includes Clive, a British functionary, his wife Betty played by a man, their daughter Victoria played by a rag doll, Clive’s friend Harry an explorer, Mrs. Saunders who runs about dressed in a riding habit, Clive’s son Edward who still plays with dolls and is played by a woman and Joshua a native servant who knows exactly what is really going on. What really is going on is a marvelous send up and a non stop round robin of sexual liaisons. All this time the natives are restless in the background. The second act shifts to London in 1980 except for the surviving characters it is only twenty five years later and all those repressed sexual longings have evaporated along with the Empire. Rob Kastil directs.