Clouds (tour)

Seeing and understanding are two quite different
things. That difference is even greater when
what’s in vision concerns the clash of cultures.
So the revival of Michael Frayn‘s 1976
comedy-with-bite is as topical today as it was
then – and probably will be in another 30
years.

Clouds
is set in Castro‘s Cuba. Rival
British Sunday paper colour supplement editors
have commissioned Owen, a been-there, done-that
journalist (Lloyd Owen) and Mara (Tara
Fitzgerald), a romantic novelist to write
articles on the current state of the island. The
misunderstandings begin at once as each thinks
the other is the Tourism Ministry’s appointed
minder.

Enter Ed ({Rolf Saxon}), also on a literary
mission, though this time from the United States.
He’s been to Cuba before and written an academic
tome based on his experiences, but his vision is
as much cloud-veiled as that of the two newcomers.

This being a Frayn play, you don’t
expect that either Angel (Darrell D’Silva), the
actual Ministry official or Hilberto (Ewen
Cummins), the driver of the allotted car will
fit tidily into anyone’s stereotype. They don’t.

All five characters to some extent live in
cloud-cuckoo-land so, when their heads
momentarily come out of those clouds, the result
is pain. Pain both physical and emotional. The
audience is swept onto the same roller-coaster
and our laughter is therefore rueful, especially
towards the non-conclusive end.

Jennie Darnell‘s production keeps the action
fast and furious with a black-box set by Matthew
Wright and minimal furniture and props. Time of
day, sultry heat and tropical storms are
suggested through Tim Mitchell‘s effective
lighting and projections, though I could have
wished that Fergus O’Hare had muted some of his
sound effects.

The performances are good and allow us to feel
sorry for the individual dilemmas as well as
exasperated by the mess the characters are making
of their own and other people’s lives. I
especially liked Tara Fitzgerald‘s portrait of
a Hampstead hippy aware of a skewed life-work
balance and Darrell D’Silva‘s weary acceptance
that life was, life is and probably will go on
just the same.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” wrote
the French journalist Alphonse Karr in 1849.
How true. Frayn knows it. So do the
rest of us – when we take our heads out of the
clouds.

– Anne Morley-Priestman (reviewed at Cambridge Arts Theatre)