Get Off My Cloud

Cloud 9

Directed by Marya Cohn

Written by Caryl Churchill

At the Loeb Theater

Through July 12

REMEMBER WHEN you told your first dirty joke? How you sort of giggled and looked nervous because you weren't quite sure if you understood what you were saying? And then you had this feeling that what you were doing wasn't right, but that made the joke even funnier. This season's first Harvard Summer Theater production, Cloud 9, is a lot like that first dirty joke.

You'll squirm while watching the play and feel that hot blush starting on your neck, but--like the rest of the audience--you'll probably laugh as heartily at the smut as you did in fourth grade. But underneath the laughter, Cloud 9 has a squalid streak and leaves you feeling as though you might want to wash your mouth, or more appropriately your ears, out with soap.

Written by Caryl Churchill, the play follows the sexual awakenings of a presumably typical British family. The first part of the play takes place in Africa in 1880, where the family is happily pursuing the life of the imperialist and the second 100 years take place in 20th century London. While the time gap is not explained in the play, a program note says that the family has aged only 25 years. To make things more confusing, the actors--almost all of whom were in drag in the first act--have played musical roles and are now cast more traditionally according to sex. That is if anything in this play can constitute traditional sexual behavior.

Clive (Remo Airaldi) the patriarch of the family who is given to waxing eloquent about the greatness of the British empire, watches over his family with an eagle eye while also protecting his neighbor the "spirited" Mrs. Saunders (Lisa Peers). In one overly graphic scene, Clive's solicitousness of Mrs. Saunders entails under-the-skirt oral sex. But Betty (Daniel Luke Zelman), Clive's wife, is not exactly pure either. Harry Bagley (Christian Kanuth), a dashing explorer, comes to visit and sample his friend Clive's family life and wife.

And Harry is also not adverse to Clive's budding homosexual of a son Edward (Jane Loranger) who loves dolls and "Uncle Harry." In the midst of all this sexual confusion, Victoria--a plastic/rag doll who represents Clive's daughter remains impervious to her sexual identity as she gets casually tossed from character to character.

In the second act, however, Victoria (now played by Loranger) proves to be the pivotal character rather than Clive. Whereas the man who ran the household in Victorian times controlled the sexual manueverings and perferences of those in his household, the daughter/emerging liberated woman oversees the 1980's.

As Betty (now played by Peers) becomes progressively liberal, she leaves the repressive Clive and achieves freedom as she finds her masturbatory adventures exemplify. In case this doesn't seem enough like a Greek tragedy, the erstwhile homosexual son Edward (now played by Zelman) who has been dumped by his lover begins to discover that he wants to be a woman. After telling his sister of his new-found desire and enviously touching her breasts in a surprisingly tender and unsexual scene, Edward proclaims, "I want to be a lesbian."

But in this play of sexual charades, Edward's announcement comes as little surprise. For the play is all about repression and conforming to sexual expectations, or not. Every character in Cloud 9 is trying to break free of repression and act only as he or she wishes. Mired in having to hide perversities behind closed doors in the Victorian age, the characters have no hope of achieving any freedom.

As the play tells us, however, things are not much better in this century where attaining peace of mind can often be blocked by trying to figure out whether you are really doing you want to do--manifested by sexual choice--or whether you are just not doing what you are expected to do. The 1980s are the time for being free, but sometimes it seems hard to determine what freedom actually is. Ironically enough, it is the role switches between the first and second acts that lend a clue to who the real person inside each character is.

The homosexual Edward who enjoys being passive is played by Zelman who formerly played Betty, the obedient Victorian wife. The young Edward who vascillated in the first act between wishing he could play with dolls or be with the men becomes transformed into the adult Victoria who also seems unable to decide her own destiny. And Betty becomes more self-confident as the woman who plays the domineering Mrs. Sanders in the first act takes on the role of Betty in the second.

Performed in the cozy Loeb experimental theater, Cloud 9 somehow involves the entire audience in its plot. At times, the characters pause for soliloquies and then the play reaches its most poignant moments. But the play is not often sweet, nor does it often seem realistic. Therefore, you really do not care how the characters resolve their problems, but end up feeling more grateful that you are not one of the tortured few on stage.

Just as in that fourth grade joke, the play makes you feel as though you would rather laugh and be done with it, thereby absolving yourself from all responsibility for the perversions. But after it's over the thoughts it provoked remain.