STAGE REVIEW : Farcical Gender Bending on ‘Cloud Nine’

Perhaps the most legitimate knock against contemporary playwrights is that they don’t write plays that deliver a challenge to the actors, and, by extension, the audience. You especially feel it when seeing that sadly rare spectacle of a repertory company doing one of the classics and a fairly new work consecutively. The Shakespeare was a workout, but that new piece was a walk in the park.

One of our living exceptions is British feminist playwright Caryl Churchill, whose great, comic exploration of sexual roles, “Cloud Nine,” is a repertory festival in one play: gender-bending colonists in 1889 Africa in Act I; gender-bending Londoners in the 1980s (with gender-bending casting to match) in Act II.

At the West Coast Ensemble, in an absolutely scintillating visiting production staged by Allison R. Liddi, our Londoners are now in 1989--nine years updated from the original production. Despite an inserted and unnecessary reference to “Batman,” the updating is in line with Churchill’s intent, which is to observe how much--or how little--we have traveled on the road to human freedom.

Churchill’s observations are painted in the colors of farce, but never has farce been kinder. Liddi’s production is even clearer on this point than the Don Amendolia/Tommy Tune version we got at L.A. Stage Company in 1983, and it is only partly because of the intimate, arena-like staging, with the audience positioned at both ends of the playing area. The crucial factor is Liddi’s cast, which has taken Churchill’s modern and Victorian stereotypes wholesale, then has valiantly dug underneath to find the human qualities.

This may seem impossible when you consider that, for instance, actress Christy Barrett plays young, effeminate Edward in Act I, and Edward’s mother Betty in Act II (when the characters are 25 years older, even though it’s a century later). But the common link between Edward and Betty is that they discover their sexual appetites; how they deal with them is where the comedy emerges--along with some brilliant insights into the human condition.

The first act joke, a familiar one, is that 19th-Century repression has made these British colonists all the more randy and perverted (Kim Taylor’s Mrs. Saunders moans while Forrest Witt’s two-timing Clive is giving her pleasure, “I don’t want to enjoy myself like this. I’m trying to concentrate!”).

Everybody is after every body , especially the body of adventurer Harry Bagley (Andy Philpot), who comes to embody the British Empire come home to roost. The sexual pot starts to boil until a lid is put on it, from which no one suffers more than Clive’s wife, Betty (John Cardone, a superb farceur ).

The lid is off by 1989, when the characters seem to be enjoying their choice of life style. The joke now is that, with so much choice, the characters, like dizzied customers in a vast supermarket, have gotten lost. Churchill’s genius lies in her device to have the Victorian ghosts come back and light the way, while drawing unpredictable conclusions about the destinations they’ve chosen for themselves.

The miracle is that with such weighty considerations, “Cloud Nine” is as funny and jocular as any play in at least the past 10 years. The levels of fun could fill a high-rise, and this company covers all of them. The diagonal stage ramp, with the wall-to-wall curtain of Union Jacks on the sidelines, lend this “Cloud Nine” the feeling of a sporting event (Bill Eigenbrodt’s inventive set, Lonnie Alcaraz’ sharp lights).

And what condition these actors are in. Besides Barrett, Cardone, Taylor and Philpot, Russell Alexander switches from a puzzling African servant to a crybaby, and Beth Taylor goes the full distance from an uptight matron to a bisexual wife. This is a company that should remain a team.

At 6240 Hollywood Blvd., on Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m. Until Aug. 13. Tickets: $12.50; (213) 871-1052.