'Cloud 9' review — Caryl Churchill's topsy-turvy satire challenges gender roles and theatrical convention

Read our review of Cloud 9, directed by Dominic Cooke, now in performances at the National Theatre to 13 January 2027.

Summary

• Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 is revived at the National Theatre
• The wild satire tackles gender roles and social expectations
• The excellent ensemble includes Sam Troughton and Charlotte Ritchie
• Dominic Cooke directs a resonant, witty revival

Can a play written in 1979 about gender, gender roles and sexuality still have something to say about the world today? Caryl Churchill’s at times bewilderingly weird, topsy-turvy satire Cloud 9 digs into colonialism and the impact of Empire, British values and how those social conventions govern how we live, love and define ourselves. While it might not feel quite as pertinent to the present moment as it did on its first outing, in the hands of Dominic Cooke, one of Churchill’s longtime collaborators, it is a revival that shows both how times change and how the ideas inherited from previous generations continue to shape us.

Cooke makes the two halves of Churchill’s wildly distinctive play feel worlds apart. After a 30-minute interval (yes, really!), the thick velvet theatre curtain and proscenium arch are broken apart and collapsed messily across the stage. But at first, we’re in 19th-century Africa with a British family, headed by Clive (Sam Troughton), a colonial administrator and patriarch. Everyone here is straining to be the person they’re expected to be – Betty (played by Stuart Thompson) is a “man’s creation”, busying herself by entertaining guests and pleasing her husband. Secretly, though, she is lusting after Harry Bagley (Tom Mothersdale), who, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, has also been grooming her son Edward (Ellen Robertson). We watch as Edward’s love for dolls and necklaces, and his confessions of love for Harry, are beaten out of him in a misguided attempt to mould him into the man of his father's eye.

Dressed in black-and-white costumes designed by Samuel Wyer, the characters are shown, on the surface, to be trapped in a world of rigid binaries. Yet the contradictions and hypocrisy of this society provide plenty of laughs, as private desires inevitably spill into public view. This farcical humour gives way to something more tender in the second act, set in the 1970s, when Betty – now played by Ellen Robertson – decides to leave her husband and discovers that happiness can be found in her independence.

Cloud 9, as with much of Churchill’s work, is a play that tugs at theatrical convention. 125 years pass, the characters age by just 25 years, and the actors swap roles to present a less regimented society, albeit one still weighed down by confusion. You can see Cooke’s care for the text in this revival: visions of past versions of Betty and Edward appear, and lines that nod to what’s come before – “Victoria was a pretty child just like a little doll” – are played with knowing irony.

Most of all, though, this is a wonderful ensemble to behold. Troughton’s transformation into a screaming, ice-cream-licking Cathy is bonkers, while Charlotte Ritchie moves from playing a stiff-upper-lipped Maud to a gradually more free-spirited older Victoria. All of it is gloriously good fun, with ideas about societal progress, both then and now, bubbling beneath it all.

Cloud 9 is at the National Theatre to 13 January 2027. Book Cloud 9 tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Cloud 9 (Photos by Johan Persson)