Victoria, played by a doll in the first act, is now played by Cori Lynn Peterson, who was her grandmother in the first act. David Travis, formerly Clive, is now the goofy, spoiled toddler Kathy, whose mother is Victoria's friend Lynn (Vonnie Roemer). Bryan van Gorder and Jennifer Sun have exchanged roles, so that both Edward and Betty are played by the right sex. In the latter's case, this may mean that son and mother have found their true selves: he is gay, and she has left Clive and found a job.
It's meant to be confusing; this play plays fast and loose with ethnic, gender and sexual identities, in ways that are illuminating at times but usually simply gross.
Victoria's relationship with her husband martin (Robert de Neufville) is a case in point . Martin considers himself a liberated man, but he's getting fed up with being Mr. Sensitive. " I've read the Hite report," he tells us; he's even okay with Victoria's bisexuality But he can't help feeling that her telling him what she wants during sex is "like a driving lesson--left, right, faster, slower...." Enough said: she's out of there. She moves in with Lynn, and is eventually joined by Edward, who has broken up with his lover. The three of them all sleep in the same bed. Is everybody happy now? Of course they are.
The only moving moment in the second act is Betty's monologue near the end, when she talks about how she used to masturbate when she was little until her mother found out and made her stop. Now that she's left Clive, she's started doing it again, and has discovered that she is a real person in her own right without a man to give her an identity. The previous Betty (Bryan van Gorder) comes out and embraces her as the play ends.
Other than that, however, "Cloud Nine" is perverted.
If the play is meant to be merely a dark-humored farce, it should have more funny lines and less of a didactic message about patriarchy and imperialism. Decadence by itself can conceivably be fascinating and amusing if it's made clear that morality has no part in the world being depicted. When moral judgments are not an issue, the decadent scene can be viewed as art sufficient unto itself, whose amorality is part of the titillating effect of the play.
But "Cloud Nine" combines inspirational messages about sexual liberation with really sick combinations of sexual partners as the examples of that liberation. It's like watching a porno flick about saving the rain forests.
While presenting Clive's and Martin's versions of the heterosexual marriage as oppressive, the play judges the other relationships more leniently simply because they subvert this patriarchal normalcy. Harry's relationship with Edward in the first act is nothing but child abuse, and his fling with Joshua, the servant, can be seen as imperialistic exploitation. But these "relationships" are portrayed as merely alternative lifestyles, the gleeful return of the repressed in Clive's oh-so-normal British household.
Moreover, the protrayal of sexual relations in the play is often quite crude. Clive, coming out from underneath Mrs. Saunders' skirts, complains, "I have a hair in my mouth." Lynn's brother's ghost returns from the other side to give her an incisive commentary on why war is hell: "I was bored all day and wanking all night." And so on.
The excellent and versatile acting is the only thing that makes this performance worth watching. David Travis perfectly captures the body language and tone of voice of a little girl who loves obscene jump-rope rhymes and messy ice cream pops. John Knepper is impressive as the vacant-eyed but sly Joshua and then as Edward's swaggering, promiscuous lover Jerry. The rest of the cast also turns in a fine performance.
An unwitting touch of humor is added by the program notes, which warn that the play was written in 1979 before we knew about AIDS. Kids, don't try this at home: "The only way to completely avoid AIDS is to abstain from sexual intercourse," cautions the program for a play which contains 10 1/2 depictions or descriptions of extramarital sex. The moral is clear: If you sleep with your sister, use a condom.
Cloud Nine
by Caryl Churchill
Friday and Saturday
At the Loeb Experimental