Caryl Churchill’s 1979 play, Cloud Nine, is kaleidoscopic in its fizzing presentation of human perspectives. It jangles its way through a variety of theatrical manoeuvres. It is playful and potent, titillating and thoughtful.
The first act is exceedingly operatic in its Gilbert and Sullivan way, but also seeks to channel the raucous choreographed humour of the British “Carry on” movies. It isn’t hard to imagine how raw and unsettling some of this play may been been 40 years ago. Some people left this performance after interval.
The play deals with sexual identity and the quest for love. Act 1 cannons forth a lustful array of 19th century empire archetypes, somewhere in colonial Africa, whose stiff English imaginings are constantly subverted with outrageous deshabille. Male actor (Harry Greenwood) plays young women (Betty), older actor (Heather Mitchell) plays young boy (Edward), doll plays child (Victoria). This is disruption on a grand scale, convoluted but approachable. The patriarch Clive (Josh McConville) lusts after his neighbour, Mrs Saunders (Kate Box), who beats him with her riding crop. The patriarch’s’ wife, Betty, lusts after the explorer Bagley (Anthony Taufa) who loves the idea of a wife, safely at home seated at the piano in a crisp crinoline, but is a paedophile who has initiated her young son, Edward, into brotherly love and fucks the native servant, Joshua, whenever time allows. The governess, Ellen (Kate Box), loves the patriarch’s wife (Betty) but for her lesbian invisibleness Ellen has to marry the paedophile in order to secure that ties that bind the empire, an Empire that is under threat from the pulsing undercurrent that swirls as reported violence throughout the act.
The choreographed laughter, the straining for both freedom and its decorous suppression is nicely lit in this dark pantomime. The issue of trust and betrayal is laced across the corset of ideas that binds these cartoonish characters into an almost believable shape.
The tension of ruling and being ruled, the angst of fantasy and subjugation, the cross purposes of lust and love are expertly layered. The slow fuse of the native servant (Matthew Backer), his dark humour stretching his hurt and alien desire before our very eyes, is dramatically unleashed in the final moments of the act when he shoots patriarch and empire in the back.
Act 2 brings us forward a century or more to London, and a mixture of human relationships whereby the spectrum of available behaviour and identity now mirrors a different kind of freedom: to choose a life within and beyond the ordained. In essence, the strictures have dissipated, now there is voluminous choice. The various scenes of this act lead us into a different labyrinth. The humour is gentler, the human options more shaded, but we still riff on the gendered displacement of actors. Now the old woman plays the older Betty, on the cusp of leaving her patriarchal husband and learning to feel that life might be both dangerous and different. Her monologue on the rediscovery of her sexual pleasures, alone in bed, is exquisitely delivered by Heather Mitchell: here is humour and tender discovery that makes us smile and cry. The ageing Betty points the way forward when she accidently flirts with the estranged lover of her son. We glide along with her on this oh so human interrogation (I’ve never tried to pick up a man before) that quirkily establishes the gossamer thread of tentative friendship between the old and the young.
In this act, the actor playing the patriarch (Josh McConville) now plays the young child, Cathy – which somehow amplifies the rough and raw truth that young people kick around, both knowing and bemused, awfully self-centred, yet prepared to negotiate. Her mother, Lin (Kate Box), wears vague traces of the shell-shocked lesbian were encountered in crinoline in Act 1, but is now feisty, loathing the violence of men and seeking to confront love with her neighbour, a married woman: the now grown-up Victoria (Anita Hegh) we had encountered as a ventriloquist doll in Act 1.
This unfolding of sexual possibilities brings us in contact with Victoria’s husband, the metro sexual Martin (Anthony Taufa) and Victoria’s brother Edward (Harry Greenwood), now a grown-up late 20th century man who wants to replicate traditional married life with his gay lover, Gerry. Gerry yearns for the next sexual thrill, hungry for the bliss and energy that requires no spoken words, yet within that deeply available sexual pleasure lurks his confounding need for companionship. The pattern making is intricate and at time a little grid like. Greenwoods’ wayward search for an English accent doesn’t help in grounding the 20th century Edward, but Gerry's animal instincts with regards his hunt for sexual quarry is beautifully judged by Matthew Backer. The messy world of then emerging blended families and sexuality is astutely imagined by Churchill.
The journey and decision that these liberated Act 2 characters make are intricately and persuasively charted. The self, the perceptive individual muddling through a life, is a wondrous thing, but Churchill recognises that greater freedom doesn’t necessarily make life’s decisions any easier, and often a whole lot messier. At times the Act 2 situations seem to recall the knotted threads that Elizabeth Jane Howard layers around family and friends in her contemporaneous novels.
The finale, with the Betty of Act 1 in gorgeous crinoline gripping and pushing into the sky her now older self on a swing, was a beautiful recognition of how personal freedoms travels along a trajectory of societal changes and upheaval and that the longing that entrains such charges is basic and deep rooted in human kind: to be recognised and loved. The design by Elisabeth Gadsby was also effective in suggesting the suffocation and public display of the ruling class - via the use of a white box glass music room in Act 1.
In this production, directed by Kip Williams, the theatrical effects balance the visual and the textual. The Act 1 scene where the women pass the football with unremarkable dexterity is a wonderful metaphor for the gendered thinking that allotted only half a life to women for many centuries. Like the remark that there are no great women composers (Hildegard of Bingen, Fanny Mendelssohn be damned), this play allows us to experience the overarching prejudice of civilised thinking that held sway across the world for thousands of years without choking on the message, while understanding that each age expects certain conformities and each age produces kickback and a constellation of differences.
The messy happiness of Cloud Nine lingers.
Sydney Theatre Company –Wharf Theatre, Sydney - August 1, 2017
Gar Jones
The first act is exceedingly operatic in its Gilbert and Sullivan way, but also seeks to channel the raucous choreographed humour of the British “Carry on” movies. It isn’t hard to imagine how raw and unsettling some of this play may been been 40 years ago. Some people left this performance after interval.
The play deals with sexual identity and the quest for love. Act 1 cannons forth a lustful array of 19th century empire archetypes, somewhere in colonial Africa, whose stiff English imaginings are constantly subverted with outrageous deshabille. Male actor (Harry Greenwood) plays young women (Betty), older actor (Heather Mitchell) plays young boy (Edward), doll plays child (Victoria). This is disruption on a grand scale, convoluted but approachable. The patriarch Clive (Josh McConville) lusts after his neighbour, Mrs Saunders (Kate Box), who beats him with her riding crop. The patriarch’s’ wife, Betty, lusts after the explorer Bagley (Anthony Taufa) who loves the idea of a wife, safely at home seated at the piano in a crisp crinoline, but is a paedophile who has initiated her young son, Edward, into brotherly love and fucks the native servant, Joshua, whenever time allows. The governess, Ellen (Kate Box), loves the patriarch’s wife (Betty) but for her lesbian invisibleness Ellen has to marry the paedophile in order to secure that ties that bind the empire, an Empire that is under threat from the pulsing undercurrent that swirls as reported violence throughout the act.
The choreographed laughter, the straining for both freedom and its decorous suppression is nicely lit in this dark pantomime. The issue of trust and betrayal is laced across the corset of ideas that binds these cartoonish characters into an almost believable shape.
The tension of ruling and being ruled, the angst of fantasy and subjugation, the cross purposes of lust and love are expertly layered. The slow fuse of the native servant (Matthew Backer), his dark humour stretching his hurt and alien desire before our very eyes, is dramatically unleashed in the final moments of the act when he shoots patriarch and empire in the back.
Act 2 brings us forward a century or more to London, and a mixture of human relationships whereby the spectrum of available behaviour and identity now mirrors a different kind of freedom: to choose a life within and beyond the ordained. In essence, the strictures have dissipated, now there is voluminous choice. The various scenes of this act lead us into a different labyrinth. The humour is gentler, the human options more shaded, but we still riff on the gendered displacement of actors. Now the old woman plays the older Betty, on the cusp of leaving her patriarchal husband and learning to feel that life might be both dangerous and different. Her monologue on the rediscovery of her sexual pleasures, alone in bed, is exquisitely delivered by Heather Mitchell: here is humour and tender discovery that makes us smile and cry. The ageing Betty points the way forward when she accidently flirts with the estranged lover of her son. We glide along with her on this oh so human interrogation (I’ve never tried to pick up a man before) that quirkily establishes the gossamer thread of tentative friendship between the old and the young.
In this act, the actor playing the patriarch (Josh McConville) now plays the young child, Cathy – which somehow amplifies the rough and raw truth that young people kick around, both knowing and bemused, awfully self-centred, yet prepared to negotiate. Her mother, Lin (Kate Box), wears vague traces of the shell-shocked lesbian were encountered in crinoline in Act 1, but is now feisty, loathing the violence of men and seeking to confront love with her neighbour, a married woman: the now grown-up Victoria (Anita Hegh) we had encountered as a ventriloquist doll in Act 1.
This unfolding of sexual possibilities brings us in contact with Victoria’s husband, the metro sexual Martin (Anthony Taufa) and Victoria’s brother Edward (Harry Greenwood), now a grown-up late 20th century man who wants to replicate traditional married life with his gay lover, Gerry. Gerry yearns for the next sexual thrill, hungry for the bliss and energy that requires no spoken words, yet within that deeply available sexual pleasure lurks his confounding need for companionship. The pattern making is intricate and at time a little grid like. Greenwoods’ wayward search for an English accent doesn’t help in grounding the 20th century Edward, but Gerry's animal instincts with regards his hunt for sexual quarry is beautifully judged by Matthew Backer. The messy world of then emerging blended families and sexuality is astutely imagined by Churchill.
The journey and decision that these liberated Act 2 characters make are intricately and persuasively charted. The self, the perceptive individual muddling through a life, is a wondrous thing, but Churchill recognises that greater freedom doesn’t necessarily make life’s decisions any easier, and often a whole lot messier. At times the Act 2 situations seem to recall the knotted threads that Elizabeth Jane Howard layers around family and friends in her contemporaneous novels.
The finale, with the Betty of Act 1 in gorgeous crinoline gripping and pushing into the sky her now older self on a swing, was a beautiful recognition of how personal freedoms travels along a trajectory of societal changes and upheaval and that the longing that entrains such charges is basic and deep rooted in human kind: to be recognised and loved. The design by Elisabeth Gadsby was also effective in suggesting the suffocation and public display of the ruling class - via the use of a white box glass music room in Act 1.
In this production, directed by Kip Williams, the theatrical effects balance the visual and the textual. The Act 1 scene where the women pass the football with unremarkable dexterity is a wonderful metaphor for the gendered thinking that allotted only half a life to women for many centuries. Like the remark that there are no great women composers (Hildegard of Bingen, Fanny Mendelssohn be damned), this play allows us to experience the overarching prejudice of civilised thinking that held sway across the world for thousands of years without choking on the message, while understanding that each age expects certain conformities and each age produces kickback and a constellation of differences.
The messy happiness of Cloud Nine lingers.
Sydney Theatre Company –Wharf Theatre, Sydney - August 1, 2017
Gar Jones
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