"Cloud Nine". Pilch. Review by Victoria Tayler
Hysterical, hypochondriacal posh people just never get old. Postbox Production’s version of Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill takes absurdity by the face and makes out with it. It is, as my partner called it, ‘tonal whiplash.’ In one scene, the play is bawdy, riotous, in the next, disturbing, overly revelatory, uncomfortable to look at. Queer themes are played to their absolute ends: in contrast to a noted trend in Peter’s recent review of I Am a Camera there’s no reluctance regarding open displays of carnal sexuality here. The result is something riveting, expert, surprising. I laugh and wonder if I am supposed to be having a good time. How to explain Cloud Nine? Act one follows the absurdly inhibited lives of a Victorian colonial family settled in Africa. Unrest and resistance to imperial rule makes the outside world a dangerous place for our characters, who remain inside of the house where their restrictive conventions around gender and sexuality cause a societal collapse in miniature...