Theater review: Sharp, bright actors give a brisk and entertaining staging of Caryl Churchill's wild play

It is heartening to see the good that has come from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA program. A handful of recent graduates banded together in 2005 to ply their craft as "Shakespeare on the Cape," based in Provincetown, Mass. They return to the city of their schooling periodically, including a current stop at the Bottling House Theater in northeast Minneapolis with Molière's "School for Wives" and Caryl Churchill's "Cloud 9" running in repertory.

It escapes me why these youngsters prefer Cape Cod's romance and beauty to our butt-cold prairie, but it's nice to see them when we can. Eric Powell Holm's production of "Cloud 9," which opened Monday is sharp and articulate work -- bristling with daring, energy and bravery.

Churchill's enigmatic play lacerates sexual politics, the mutability of relationships and colonial domination in a dark comedy of manners. Commonly, playwrights who favor ideas over character end up with a polemical screed. Churchill is too smart for that. Her razor wit takes no prisoners, yet the piece never feels didactic.

The play takes pace in two locales, 100 years apart. In Act I, a family of British colonialists paw their way through a cross-gender scenario of grab-hand sex (all suggestive, no nudity) with neighbors, servants and an adventurer just back from the bush. Churchill then ages three of her characters by 25 years and deposits them in London, 1980. So the lad who fancied dolls now navigates a rocky union with his boyfriend; the infant represented as a rag doll becomes a grown woman testing her bisexuality and the mother who dabbled with the adventurer has left her husband. These sexual libertines ramble through messy and changing alliances as they experiment.

The key is to play this material with a brisk sense of clarity and physical purpose. Holm and his actors don't question Churchill's intent as much as they simply invest in the text.

Double casting gives the young actors nice rangy possibilities. Katy Carolina Collins morphs convincingly from young boy to old lady. Kate Melby goes the other way -- from colonial patriarch to screechy toddler. Valeri Mudek's characters are more similar, yet she bares a raw emotional authenticity. Adam Berry, too, is a terribly focused and honest actor.

I wish I could say this is the future of Twin Cities theater, but for some reason Cape Cod calls to these youngsters. We'll take what we can get and be happy about it. How Minnesotan is that?

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299