Cloud Nine Almeida - Theatre 2007

Genre: Drama
Opened 31 Oct 2007
Written: Caryl Churchill
Directed: Thea Sharrock
Produced: Almeida Theatre
Cast: James Fleet, Mark Letheren, Tobias Menzies, Bo Poraj, Joanna Scanlan, Sophie Stanton, Nicola Walker.
Synopsis: Set in colonial Africa and modern-day Britain the play is about relationships - between women and men, men and men, women and women. It is about sex, work, mothers, Africa, power, children, grandmothers, politics, money, Queen Victoria and sex.

What the critics had to say.....
NICHOLAS DE JONGH for THE EVENING STANDARD says, "Cloud Nine, despite Thea Sharrock's far too austere and deromanticised production, ought now to be established as one of the great psycho-sexual comedies of the 20th century." PAUL TAYLOR for THE INDEPENDENT says, "Cloud Nine now feels a curious customer, by turns a touch dated yet still ahead of its time. While allowing us to take pleasure in its tragicomic tricksiness, Thea Sharrock also manages to hit us with its emotional truthfulness." MICHAEL BILLINGTON for THE GUARDIAN says, "The play is full of suggestive contrasts and parallels but leaves many of its ideas about moral progress unresolved." DOMONIC CAVENDISH for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH says, "Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine is the cleverest, drollest, most sexily experimental exercise in 'compare and contrast' that British theatre has probably ever seen...The world changes totally and it changes not at all — that's the kernel of wisdom wrapped in Churchill's enduring, wholly heavenly Cloud." ALEKS SIERZ for THE STAGE says, "An absolute joy for both actors and audience. ." BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE for THE TIMES says, "This is the play that established Caryl Churchill as the most imaginatively daring of our major dramatists; and, nearly 30 years after its premiere, it still seems not only remarkably inventive but as sharp about the contradictions of gender as anything that has been written since."

External links to full reviews from popular press
The Independent
The Guardian
Daily Telegragh
The Times