Cloud 9 West End Reviews

Dominic Cooke’s revival understands the importance of the play’s theatrical contrasts. Its first half is unapologetically camp, deliberately ridiculous and British in its pomp. It is tempting to laugh at the audacity of it all, and quite right th...

Dominic Cooke’s revival understands the importance of the play’s theatrical contrasts. Its first half is unapologetically camp, deliberately ridiculous and British in its pomp. It is tempting to laugh at the audacity of it all, and quite right that we should. Yet the comedy is doing something more pointed than simply mocking the Victorians as it exposes the ridiculousness of a society that considers its own prejudices entirely reasonable.

Cloud 9, as with much of Churchill’s work, is a play that tugs at theatrical convention. 125 years pass, the characters age by just 25 years, and the actors swap roles to present a less regimented society, albeit one still weighed down by confusion...

Cloud 9, as with much of Churchill’s work, is a play that tugs at theatrical convention. 125 years pass, the characters age by just 25 years, and the actors swap roles to present a less regimented society, albeit one still weighed down by confusion. You can see Cooke’s care for the text in this revival: visions of past versions of Betty and Edward appear, and lines that nod to what’s come before – “Victoria was a pretty child just like a little doll” – are played with knowing irony.

That the pederasty and the sexual exploitation of a native underclass is still played for laughs feels distinctly uncomfortable, particularly with celebrity predators currently all over the headlines. The way Edward is clouted and derided (“sissy�...

That the pederasty and the sexual exploitation of a native underclass is still played for laughs feels distinctly uncomfortable, particularly with celebrity predators currently all over the headlines. The way Edward is clouted and derided (“sissy”, “girly”) for playing with dolls and failing to man up is another expression of warping male dominance that feels discomfiting today.

The writing is explicit. These are characters who are all discovering their sexual beings, however non-binary and gender-fluid that might be, and in finding themselves, they might actually begin to shake off the entrenched attitudes that shape societ...

The writing is explicit. These are characters who are all discovering their sexual beings, however non-binary and gender-fluid that might be, and in finding themselves, they might actually begin to shake off the entrenched attitudes that shape society. The individual who perhaps goes on the longest journey is Betty (beautifully played with simpering sadness in the first act by Sam Thompson and with strait-laced dignity in the second by Ellen Robertson) whose final acceptance of herself and the people around her is unexpectedly and heart-raisingly emotional.

All of which might sound like hard work, yet is actually anything but, in a production that is gloriously entertaining. There’s an increasingly frenzied, farcical quality to the crazed comedy of manners in the first half, in which Miriam Buether’...

All of which might sound like hard work, yet is actually anything but, in a production that is gloriously entertaining. There’s an increasingly frenzied, farcical quality to the crazed comedy of manners in the first half, in which Miriam Buether’s design surrounds an ornate stone veranda with encroaching, dense trees and the entire stage with a gilt picture frame, as if Victorian Britain, with its neat, reductive notions of culture and civilisation, is attempting to impose order on a world it can’t control or understand.

Churchill deals in archetypes rather than characters. The Victorian sequence descends into a grinding series of vignettes which have all the subtlety of a chin-stroking version of Carry On Up the Jungle. After an interval of 25 to 30 minutes, we retu...

Churchill deals in archetypes rather than characters. The Victorian sequence descends into a grinding series of vignettes which have all the subtlety of a chin-stroking version of Carry On Up the Jungle. After an interval of 25 to 30 minutes, we return to the auditorium to find audience members who were sitting in the front two rows now lounging behind the actors. The set, once framed by a traditional proscenium arch, has fallen into ruins. Was it really worth making us wait so long? I don’t think so.

If some of the exchanges bear traces of the free and frank workshops that helped inspire Churchill, the air of a work-in-progress doesn’t hurt. But in the neatest touch, and a sign of the surest dramatic instinct, Robertson (previously Edward) beau...

If some of the exchanges bear traces of the free and frank workshops that helped inspire Churchill, the air of a work-in-progress doesn’t hurt. But in the neatest touch, and a sign of the surest dramatic instinct, Robertson (previously Edward) beautifully plays the modern-day Betty (much resembling our late Queen), a widow only finally beginning to slough off Victorian expectations that women are duty-bound to serve others. Initially an uptight figure of fun, she becomes hugely sympathetic, the evolution of an entire way of being enshrined in one character: remarkable.

If some of the exchanges bear traces of the free and frank workshops that helped inspire Churchill, the air of a work-in-progress doesn’t hurt. But in the neatest touch, and a sign of the surest dramatic instinct, Robertson (previously Edward) beau...

If some of the exchanges bear traces of the free and frank workshops that helped inspire Churchill, the air of a work-in-progress doesn’t hurt. But in the neatest touch, and a sign of the surest dramatic instinct, Robertson (previously Edward) beautifully plays the modern-day Betty (much resembling our late Queen), a widow only finally beginning to slough off Victorian expectations that women are duty-bound to serve others. Initially an uptight figure of fun, she becomes hugely sympathetic, the evolution of an entire way of being enshrined in one character: remarkable.