Review: Cloud Nine

Watching Cloud Nine I was reminded about what Noam Chomsky said about nonsense, he called it “colourless green ideas sleep furiously”.

By using this set of incomprehensible words, the great linguist was trying to show how language can be grammatically correct but meaningless.

Nonsense, is in fact, an established genre of writing. It deliberately fuses order and chaos to present a confusing world that is humorous precisely because it appears to make no sense. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a prime example, as is Dr Seuss and countless other pieces of children’s literature.

Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine certainly isn’t for children but it is nonsense all the same. The play’s two acts are set in Victorian colonial Africa and 1970s London, between the two periods the actors change roles but the characters remain the same, having aged little over the intervening 100 years.

In act 1, men play women, women play boys and white men play black men. It is a deliberate attempt by Churchill to highlight the constraints of Victorian society through confusion. The result is undeniably funny, but disturbing, especially when the play points a comical finger at the issue of paedophilia.

Churchill has been writing plays since the 1950s but it was Cloud Nine, first performed in 1979 that really established her. She has since gone on to write numerous radio and television plays for the BBC and is now considered one of Britain’s foremost dramatists.

The Almedia’s adaptation of Cloud Nine is well acted, particularly James Fleet (Four Weddings and a Funeral) who plays Clive, a colonial old boy in act 1, and Cathy, a 5-year-old girl in act 2. Joanna Scanlan (Girl with a Pearl Earring) is also as Clive’s mother in law, and then in the later act, his daughter.

As the play canters into act 2 it becomes less confusing and more approachable, adopting a rhythm that eases the audience out of mysterious colonial Africa into the recognisable settings of a London park. This is in part testament to the director, Thea Sharrock - returning from her much applauded direction of Peter Shaffer’s Equus at the Gielgud Theatre. Throughout, she keeps the dialogue tight and the scenes seamless; getting the best out of the difficult cross gender roles that work well in making us question our assumptions on relationships and sex. Even the issue of colonialisation, sitting uneasily among the other themes is provokingly explored.

Good acting, directing and script, why then was Cloud Nine such a let down? Perhaps the set, which is basic, could have been better put together. Or the play itself could have spent more time bedding in the context. Or simply, because it is nonsense.

Cloud Nine, Almeida Theatre, until 8 December.