SOURCE: "Sexual Confusion on Cloud 9," in The New York Times, 20 May 1981, p. C30.

In the following review, Rich provides a mixed assessment of Cloud 9, stating that "the acting buttresses the writing considerably. "

Cloud 9, a new comedy by a British writer named Caryl Churchill, may not transport the audience all the way to Cloud 9 but it surely keeps us on our toes. The evening's subject is sexual confusion, and Miss Churchill has found a theatrical method that is easily as dizzying as her theme. Not only does she examine a cornucopia of sexual permutations—from heterosexual adultery right up to bisexual incest—but she does so with a wild array of dramatic styles and tricks.

Her first act, which is part bedroom farce and part Waughian satire, unfolds in the darkest colonial Africa of 1880. Act II, a foray into sometimes sentimental agitprop, takes place in a London park of...