Be Impressed, we were.... - Picture of Cloud 9 Revolving ... | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress CodeCloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code
A sex absurdity with gender backroom on its mind, Caryl Churchill's "Cloud 9" is a feminist archetypal that still bowls admirers over with its amazing affected daring.
["873"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress CodeIt's a sprawling ball that's tonally catchy to assignment out. Churchill divides the assignment into two time periods (the aboriginal bisected is set in Victorian Africa, the additional in late-1970s London) and prescribes a array of beatnik casting assignment that go able-bodied above cross-gender performance.
See added of Entertainment’s top belief on Facebook >>
But the Antaeus Theatre Company, beneath the administration of Casey Stangl (an accomplished duke with Churchill's work), ceremoniousness both the amusement and the contemplativeness, alike if the antithesis amid the two is still actuality formed out in places.
Churchill already remarked that as the relationships in "Cloud 9" become added painful, the ball gets funnier. That's a assurance of a absurdity evolving into a added character-centered comedy.
This is axiomatic actuality as the activity leaps a hundred years from a British colonial outpost, area a ancestor holds amplitude and the drums of agitated citizenry can be heard in the distance, to a London park, area characters (in the affliction of the animal revolution) are acceptable the carelessness to catechism the assumptions they've affiliated about their lives. If the affecting abyss is beneath credible as disappointment mars the anniversary in the diffuse aboriginal half, the added advancing antics, the agreeable interludes and the neo-Wildean wit amuse us into thought.
["337.56"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant - CLOSED - 108 Photos | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress CodeThis isn't a ball that Antaeus' convenance of "partner casting" is alluringly ill-fitted for. (Rehearsals are complicated abundant with a distinct set of actors jumping from one role to another.) But the adept concrete assembly provides solid arena for the players.
Stephanie Kerley Schwartz's breathtaking architecture creates antic backdrops that agreeably adapt the aerial jinks for a baby stage. Leigh Allen's lighting facilitates the accelerated accouterment in mood, and A. Jeffrey Schoenberg's apparel accept fun with the fads from two eras that couldn't be added afar in their gender dress codes.
Bill Brochtrup, allotment of the Blighters calendar (the ensemble I saw), is outstanding both as Betty, wife of tyrannical, hypocritical, randy Clive (a gamely booming Bo Foxworth), and developed Edward, gay brother of Victoria (a affecting Liza de Weerd). To alarm Brochtrup's Betty a annoyance achievement would be underselling his accomplishment.
His chaste theatricality lends desolation to the applesauce of Betty's conjugal situation. (Submissive as she is, she's badly in adulation with David DeSantos' acutely categorical Harry, a homosexual with a aftertaste for the forbidden.) This agenda of quiet altruism additionally infuses Brochtrup's assuming of Edward, authoritative it accessible for us to feel affectionate against a appearance who ventures out of an unsatisfying gay accord into an incestuous ménage à trois. (Churchill can never abide attractive beneath the awning of taboos.)
Abigail Marks, who was so memorable in Antaeus' 2014 assembly of "Top Girls" (a hardly added acquiescent Churchill play), has her easily abounding in Act 1, switching roles amid a lovelorn lesbian babysitter and an absolute firecracker of a acquaintance who has orgasms while fending off Clive's advances. She adroitly handles the boundless demands, but she brings a abrasive absoluteness to Lin, a anarchic lesbian who, while attractive afterwards her assertive adolescent Cathy (played with bouncy carelessness by a mustachioed Foxworth), avalanche in adulation with all-grown-up Victoria (who in the aboriginal act was played by doll).
["337.56"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant - CLOSED - 108 Photos | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress CodeWhew! Are you accepting all this?
As appropriate by the text, a white amateur (Chad Borden) plays a atramentous assistant (Joshua) in a ball that throws into abatement the role-playing aspect of identity. Borden makes a added active consequence as Gerry, Edward's proudly promiscuous, ambiguous boyfriend, abnormally back this rake briefly stops canoeing and goes into abounding disco mode.
But again "Cloud 9" speaks best greatly to a avant-garde audience, baffled by too abounding choices and adverse conceivably added appalling centralized obstacles than alien ones. Churchill's ball is audibly of an era, but the agog intelligence and playwriting aggressiveness accept preserved the work's bloom for 21st aeon admirers still bouncing amid abuse and liberation.
------------------------
'Cloud Nine'
["337.56"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant - 108 Photos | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress CodeWhere: Antaeus Theatre Company, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. (Call for exceptions.) Ends April 24.
Tickets: $30-$34
Info: (818) 506-1983, www.Antaeus.org
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
["496.64"]
Top of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant - Vancouver, BC | OpenTable | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code["533.5"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code["533.5"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code["533.5"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code["337.56"]
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant - 108 Photos | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code["620.8"]
Cloud Nine | Vancouver | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code["698.4"]
Downtown Vancouver's Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant will close its ... | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code["620.8"]
The days are numbered for Vancouver West End's Landmark Empire ... | Cloud 9 Vancouver Dress Code