Crimson Missed Play

To the Editors:

I find it most disappointing that your paper has yet to review the production of Caryl Churchill's "Cloud 9" that is presently playing at the Loeb Experimental Theater in Cambridge. Since your paper has reviewed other, far less professional productions by the Harvard Summer Theater Program such as a recent production of "The Bathtub," I find it inexplicable that you have overlooked this wonderful piece of theater. "Cloud 9" is not only an entertaining play; it is an important play as well. Churchill's feminist representation of gender roles and the politics of sex is just as relevant to the greater Boston area in 1992 as it was in 1979 England.

Why is it, then, that your paper has overlooked a production that everybody should see, when in the past you have been not the least bit reluctant to review productions that lack any semblance of artistic or political merit? Your failure to print a review of this feminist play suggests a patriarchal, rather conservative political agenda and a stubborn unwillingness to approach the theater with an open mind.

As a long-time reader, I sincerely hope that this is not the case. I strongly urge you to give this excellent production its fair share of press. It is high time that all publications realize that progress will never be made on issues of gender relations as long as attention is devoted exclusively to conventional drama at the expense of productions like "Cloud 9" that raise important questions without going overboard with excessive radical feminist rhetoric.