Cloud Nine

Cloud Nine is a play that tosses you this way and then turns you the other way.  Presented in the round at the  Linda Gross Theater (Atlantic Theater Company), one could feel as though she has been dropped in a kaleidoscope.  The actors briskly enter and leave from every corner of the venue.  Events swirl and with each turn of the kaleidoscope, it all gets a little stranger and more disorienting.  Not that that’s a bad thing.

In Caryl Churchill’s world, set in colonial Africa and 1979 London, you’re not going to feel comfortable.  Rather, this world is time-bending, gender-bending, mind-bending, reality-rending good fun.  She’s a he and now he’s a she, and he’s a kid and she’s someone else altogether.  You just have to let go and slide around with the kaleidoscope. 

To add to this delightfully off-beat experience, I saw this play with my book club. I am lucky enough to belong to a marvelous book club - the Lazy Readers.  Not that anyone is actually lazy, it’s just that we read about six books a year and see film and go to the theater the other six months.  So we all trooped to the theater on a particularly rainy day and enjoyed our transport to this alternate universe.  I can’t say everyone loved it but everyone did appreciate the acting (Brooke Bloom was a standout) and it created a lively post-theater debriefing session.  My stepdaughter, Hannah, who is studying for her MFA at Columbia, also joined us and she added youthful energy and intellectual insight.

The Lazy Readers go see Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine.

I’d call that a very good day on Cloud Nine.

Review by MSG

Side Notes:

We enjoyed a pre-theater nosh of savories and salads accompanied by a lovely assortment of bagels from Murray's.  Murray's in an institution in Chelsea and we regularly enjoy their appetisings on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Their whole whitefish is always a great favorite with houseguests.  Plus you get a great cup of coffee.