By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller
On a London park bench in the swinging 1970s life was anything but conventional.
Back in the early 1980s, productions of British playwright Caryl Churchill's “Cloud 9” startled our more conservative society just as it was slowly becoming more self-aware aware of some significant inequalities.
The phrase “political correctness” was just getting started. People were stunned to realize so much racism and male superiority had been hard-baked into the English language.
Out in the “Cloud 9” audience, shocked heads spun with neck-snapping abruptness. “Did that actor just shout the F-word?” “Why is that woman's' role being played by a man?” “Is it even legal for gay couples to get married?”
Today we the progressively minded are so proud, that after some 45 years of social change, black and brown skinned citizens are treated more equally with whites, while gay couples can proudly walk together down most any street and women aren't defined by their marital status.
But ever mindful that American President Donald Trump wants to take our own country back to those good old days of white male privilege, the Rogue Theatre must have felt this is a good time to open a new production of “Cloud 9,” with Christopher Johnson directing.
The theater company's timing is terrific, although Churchill's deliberately unconventional approach can still be a little challenging. Structurally, Act One is set in British colonial Africa around 1880 or so, with the Empire at its zenith. Then Act Two takes place in London during the swinging 1970s.
While historically nearly100 years have passed during intermission, on stage the characters from Act One have only aged 25 years in Act Two. Keeping track of everything and everybody can call for a little extra doing.
Sophie Gibson-Rush plays a young male in the first act and a female in the second. Christopher Pankratz plays a black African manservant in the first act and a troubled Londoner after intermission. Hunter Hnat with a bushy black beard plays an obedient wife in Act One and then a very disobedient lad in more modern times.
Matt Walley is a great white British colonizer in charge of his African plantation during the first act and then a mischievous child in the following act.
Cynthia Jeffrey, Joseph McGrath, and Terry Lee Thomas are also cast playing different roles in each act. Johnson as director keeps all the pieces moving at an animated pace, adding life to the ample amounts of humor Churchill uses to shape each scene.
Members of the audience will take away different messages and have different favorite scenes as father knows best in the first act, while feminist and LGBTQ issues blossom after intermission,
Also implied is the larger point that even as some social inequities do get resolved, the changes don't bring happiness so much as they create a fresh set of problems.
“Cloud 9” continues through November 23 with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m., in The Rogue Theatre of the Historic Y, 300 E. University Blvd.
Run time is two hours 15 minutes, including a 10 minute intermission. Tickets are $49. For details and reservations, 520-551-2053, or visit www.theroguetheatre.org
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