Cloud 9: A Foggy Historical Relic

I love modern art, but I believe it takes research to fully appreciate. Sure, there are pieces that are immediately engaging, but all work benefits from discovering the process and the meaning behind it. Cat Martinez’s Africatown, Generational Trauma instantaneously impressed me with the intricacy of water and metal. Learning the materials were actually sourced from historical locations of oppression made it mind-blowing. 

And then there are pieces like Gnaw by Janine Antoni, two 600-pound cubes of chocolate and lard that Antoni shaped through chewing. It seems unsavory on the surface, but the piece discusses feminine expectations and urges. That makes the art better, even if I’d never display it in my home.

British playwright Caryl Churchill’s seminal 1979 work Cloud 9 needs background knowledge. Going into it blind shocked my system. I knew the basics of the story – cross-gender role casting, a wild time jump, exploration of sexual norms – but not the context, and merciful heavens, I was viscerally uncomfortable throughout. Churchill’s script made me want to tear away the skin of my face and use it as a hood to hide in. I wanted to shrink into the earth and have no ears or eyes with which to hear or see. To me the narrative plodded along like a horse of the apocalypse, terrifying and inevitable. 

Churchill developed Cloud 9 in a 1978 workshop dedicated to exploring sexual politics. Learning that helped me understand the wild swings and stitching of plotlines when viewing the Stage’s production of the work. Still, the casual discussion of child molestation and incest, seemingly played here for laughs or heartwarming moments, made this material I’d rather not revisit. But I can at least acknowledge the craft and intention behind the art.

Act I follows Clive (Benjamin Rodriguez) and Betty (Kirk Kelso), a married British couple in Victorian-colonized Africa. They’re raising their son (Cindy Bob Timms) and literal doll of a daughter while maintaining gender roles and British ideals through constant temptation. Act I jumps to 1979, but moves the family forward only 25 years, where the adult son and daughter (now played by Frank Rivera and Timms, respectively) deal with modern British life and their own sexual inclinations.

Roles are played across gender and race, the latter of which leads to the most immediate discomfort. Even though Rivera does an impressively capable job playing African house boy Joshua in the first act, his declarations of hatred toward his dark skin and assertion he’s pure white inside made me squeamish, even if it’s an intentional visual joke. It comes off more as modern colonialism of roles instead of any significant commentary on racism.

The Stage’s production already played at a sad disadvantage. Two of the main actors dropped out at the last minute for reasons unknown, pushing the planned opening back a week. Timms came on 10 days before opening. Rodriguez joined five days before and was still leaning on the script during the performance. He played it off fairly well, incorporating the book into his characters. Luckily the cast rallied to make the rest of the show as natural as possible. While the material was perhaps not for me, I still admired Mindy Keenan’s dual roles of grumpy grandma and lusty lesbian, and applauded Maureen Klein Slabaugh’s three distinct characters. She expertly switched voices and posture between each role, even channeling Kelso’s first-act Betty mannerisms into her own second-act portrayal of the character. The cast didn’t fail to bring the source to vivid life. The source failed to establish nuanced relevance in the year 2026.

Cloud 9 wants to explore sex and gender, imperialism and cultural expectations. Muddy messaging confuses each goal. Act I plays broad farce for laughs despite awful interpersonal details. Act II plays for sympathy during wild orgies. Neither fully succeeds. The take on queerness chilled my blood. Depictions of gay, straight, bisexual, and gender-questioning characters didn’t seem to honor any of those designations. The view on race and British supremacy is undercut by the script-required casting. At moments it seems like a conservative sleeper play designed to skewer the ridiculousness of the free-love hippie movement. At others it seems to endorse a post-racial societal flattening. Cloud 9 wants to be brave. Instead, through no real fault of the Stage, it’s a mess.

This article appears in May 22 • 2026.