Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 is one of my favorite plays. It’s deep and complex, but also problematic (for reasons which will be explained more below). The first half is set in roughly 1880 in British colonial Africa. The act centers on Clive and his family, including his young son Edward (played by a female actor), his wife Betty (played by a male actor), his daughter Victoria (played by a doll), and their black African servant Joshua (played by a white actor). The act also includes Betty’s mother Maud, a neighbor from a nearby farm named Mrs. Saunders, the governess Ellen, and an explorer named Harry Bagley. The tension of the first act takes two major forms, first a conflict with the indigenous Africans—represented on stage only by Joshua, who continually emphasizes his devotion to the British and to Clive particularly—and second, that everyone is sleeping with someone (or multiple people, or wants to sleep with someone) they shouldn’t. Clive is sleeping with Mrs. Saunders, Betty wants to sleep with Harry, Ellen wants to sleep with Betty, and Harry is sleeping with Joshua and Edward, and tries to seduce both Betty and Clive. Combine this with a brilliant satirical send up of the colonial patriarch in Clive with his stupid self-assuredness and patronizing of everyone he considers inferior, and the first act is a joy to watch. I will discuss the second act in a bit, because it has a lot more problems, but basically it moves several of the characters—Edward, Victoria, and Betty—into the present, which when Churchill wrote to play was the early 1980s, and ages them just 25 years. They struggle with finding love, building stable relationships, exploring non-normative sexualities, and trying to be individuals.

The set of the WVU production of Cloud 9.

As is typical of WVU Theatre, the production, directed by Radhica Ganapathy, was excellent. The performances were strong without exception, and the show demonstrated WVU’s typical flair for balancing innovative style with a fidelity to the central thematic concerns of the play as written. Probably the best example of this balance comes in the set design for the first act. The set consisted of a tilted platform designed to look like a rock tile version of the Union flag, surrounded by a bunch of boulders suggesting human forms (see the set photo). There are some very distinct pieces—a torso, several legs, a splayed female body, a penis, etc.—decorated with thrust out pieces of rebar suggesting either ‘poison arrows’ or body hair, each of which gets a passing mention in the play.

The set in the second act is less distinct and innovative (though this is in keeping with the play’s second act, as we shall see more below). The act if set in a 1980s park, with advertisements for the Tate Modern gallery. The beautiful set pieces (those that remain on stage) are transformed into art works for a Tate exhibition entitled “Queering Africa.” Other than the advertisements for the exhibit, however, the set pieces are incidental and most of the action takes place in an open central area with two park benches on either side. The tilted Union flag platform becomes a park fountain and is the only truly unique set piece still important to the second act.

As for the acting, I really don’t have much to say about it because to performers were uniformly fantastic. They made excellent use of the stage space, which was especially impressive in the first act because the set pieces were so irregular. It is always a treat to see complex characters—and all of Churchill’s characters in Cloud 9 are complex—given their appropriate depth and dynamism. For instance, Edward (Haley Hizer) in act one is a mercurial role, alternating (sometimes rapidly) between childish petulance, defiant anger, haughty superiority, desperation for affection/approval, and lascivious sexuality. Hizer skillfully managed these transitions, shifting rapidly and convincingly between these emotions.

While the set and performances were absolutely top quality, Cloud 9 itself is a problematic play. It does a lot of fascinating thematic things, but it doesn’t always manage to do those fascinating things effectively. Act one is tight and well put together, with a coherent style and storyline. But then act two becomes a lot more fragmented. To a certain extent, this is intentional. But unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it works dramatically. The storyline itself has great potential, though I don’t find it as engaging as the first act. Victoria leaves her husband, Martin, and Edward is left by his partner, Gerry, and they both move in with Lin. The three become lovers of a sort, and they try to mind Victoria and Martin’s son (who never appears on stage) and Lin’s daughter, Cathy (played by the actor who played Clive in act one). Betty leaves Clive and tries to find herself through work and masturbation. Unfortunately, there just isn’t much that actually goes on in the act.

Part of the problem is stylistic. Churchill varies the style of performance in ways that feel more clumsy than purposeful. For instance, we get a series of monologues, particularly from Gerry (Liam Michael Holton) and Betty (Elise Rucker). Some of the later monologues are slightly intriguing because they are interrupted by figures from the first act, returning from colonial Africa. This is the fascinating aspect of Churchill’s postmodern temporal playfulness. But the monologues fundamentally don’t feel like they belong in the same play with the main storyline. The break in style undermines the otherwise potential unity of the second act. The second act is inherently slower than the first act, but in performance it could have been sped up slightly if the WVU production had devoted less time to the (not particularly interesting) yelling at and chasing around off-stage children gags.

I’ve seen Cloud 9 before and I’ve read the text a few times, but I can never remember the ending. And seeing the play again reminded me why. I can’t remember the ending because the play doesn’t end. It just stops. There’s no real conclusion or resolution, it seems that Churchill just picked an image and ended with that. In the script, Betty has just finished a monologue about rediscovering the joys of masturbation, when 1880s Clive shows up and admonishes here about “not being that kind of woman” (an echo of a speech he gave her in act one after she kissed Harry Bagley), then the 1880s version of Betty shows up in her Victorian dress and desperation to conform precisely to Clive’s ideals. In the script, 1980s Betty and 1880s Betty embrace, as Betty comes to a reconciliation. In the WVU production, the ending is more ambiguous, but also less conclusive—most of the lights go down, except a kind of classic horror movie rectangle of light between the two versions of the woman, and 1980s Betty steps toward her Victorian counterpart, but then the lights go out. The final embrace, representing Churchill’s written self-reconciliation is omitted. Whether that ambiguity adds anything is difficult to say.