National Theatre, London
The experimental 1979 drama gleefully muddles roles in a century-spanning caper that bounces from colonial Africa to hippy London
Caryl Churchill’s time-hopping 1979 drama is not revived as often as it might be, perhaps because it is so magnificently madcap. Bouncing from a first act satirising Victorian life in colonial Africa to a second act exploring sexual liberation in 1970s London, it could easily roll off-kilter in the wrong hands. There is also its complicated framework. Cloud 9 is a play in two distinct parts which follows some of the characters a century on, although they only age 25 years in that time and are played by different actors through ironic cross-casting.
Thankfully this crisp, handsome and note-perfect revival lands in exactly the right hands with director Dominic Cooke, clear as crystal despite the complications, sizzling with satire but showing itself to be a deadly serious, and still highly topical, play about identity beneath its playful sending up of everything from empire and Britishness to the confinements of marriage.