photo by Tim Fuller

On a London park bench in the swinging 1970s life was anything but conventional.

Back in the early 1980s, productions of British playwright Caryl Churchill's “Cloud 9” startled our more conservative society just as it was slowly becoming more self-aware aware of some significant inequalities.

The phrase “political correctness” was just getting started. People were stunned to realize so much racism and male superiority had been hard-baked into the English language.

Out in the “Cloud 9” audience, shocked heads spun with neck-snapping abruptness. “Did that actor just shout the F-word?” “Why is that woman's' role being played by a man?” “Is it even legal for gay couples to get married?”

Today we the progressively minded are so proud, that after some 45 years of social change, black and brown skinned citizens are treated more equally with whites, while gay couples can proudly walk together down most any street and women aren't defined by their marital status.

But ever mindful that American President Donald Trump wants to take our own country back to those good old days of white male privilege, the Rogue Theatre must have felt this is a good time to open a new production of “Cloud 9,” with Christopher Johnson directing.

The theater company's timing is terrific, although Churchill's deliberately unconventional approach can still be a little challenging. Structurally, Act One is set in British colonial Africa around 1880 or so, with the Empire at its zenith. Then Act Two takes place in London during the swinging 1970s.

While historically nearly100 years have passed during intermission, on stage the characters from Act One have only aged 25 years in Act Two. Keeping track of everything and everybody can call for a little extra doing.

Sophie Gibson-Rush plays a young male in the first act and a female in the second. Christopher Pankratz plays a black African manservant in the first act and a troubled Londoner after intermission. Hunter Hnat with a bushy black beard plays an obedient wife in Act One and then a very disobedient lad in more modern times.

Matt Walley is a great white British colonizer in charge of his African plantation during the first act and then a mischievous child in the following act.

Cynthia Jeffrey, Joseph McGrath, and Terry Lee Thomas are also cast playing different roles in each act. Johnson as director keeps all the pieces moving at an animated pace, adding life to the ample amounts of humor Churchill uses to shape each scene.

Members of the audience will take away different messages and have different favorite scenes as father knows best in the first act, while feminist and LGBTQ issues blossom after intermission,

Also implied is the larger point that even as some social inequities do get resolved, the changes don't bring happiness so much as they create a fresh set of problems.

“Cloud 9” continues through November 23 with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m., in The Rogue Theatre of the Historic Y, 300 E. University Blvd.

Run time is two hours 15 minutes, including a 10 minute intermission. Tickets are $49. For details and reservations, 520-551-2053, or visit www.theroguetheatre.org

movie and that title have become so popular they have been colloquially adapted to stand for the act of deliberately misleading a person, causing them to question their own sanity. In both “Gas Light' and “Deceived” a fragile wife is frightened into total disarray by her own conniving husband.

The big difference in “Deceived” is that the distressed wife Bella (Laakan Mchardy) finds strength within herself to save herself. To become her own hero.

In both versions, the conniving husband is as duplicitous as ever. Here he is Jack (Tony Roach), a tall, lanky and totally convincing fellow who gets Bella so twisted up inside she thinks maybe her own suicide is the only way out.

Onstage to add more plot turns to this heady psychodrama are Amelia White as the older and wiser housekeeper Elizabeth, along with Sarah-Anne Martinez as the house's perky young maid, Nancy.

The deepest marvel in ATC's production, directed by Jenn Thompson, is the attention to every aspect of detail -- from the illusions of flickering gas light in 1901 that fills this stylish London town house to the formal manners that were so important to the social aspirations of movers and shakers in the Victorian era.

Thompson emphasizes how this importance of a correct appearance made it possible to hide significant sinister intentions by making everything look proper on the surface.

From the play's first moment, this twist of intent is established in the deliberately distorted stage set designed by Alexander Dodge. While filling the entire width and depth of the theater's stage, the perspective feels like one corner of the house is pulled up while the diagonal corner is pulled down. Yet everything seems to be in its proper place, albeit in sort of a haunted way.

A lighting design by Philip Rosenberg and sound design by Jane Shaw so successfully add cinematic qualities of a violent storm and the clashing emotional tensions to Bella's own struggles, the opening night audience jumped to add its own cheering, standing ovation at the end.

“Deceived” runs through October 18, with performances Tuesdays through Sundays in the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. For details and ticket prices, visit www.atc.org or phone 1-833-ATC-SEAT.

As a theatrical performance, the conversations between turbulent Marjorie and mechanical Walter are brilliantly performed. Playwright Jordan Harrison has constructed “Marjorie Prime” so cleverly, and director Christopher Johnson puts so much attention to the most subtle details, we come away believing reality can indeed exist in many shades of imagination.

Completing the cast are Carley Elizabeth Preston and Matt Walley as Marjorie's tense daughter Tess and her goodhearted husband Jon. Tess is equally as mercurial as her mom in abrupt mood shifts. Slipping into middle age Tess faces her own dystopia that she never had a warm relationship with her mother.

Every conversation between the two always ends in a bickering, sputtering argument. For both women, family life exists more in their head than in their hearts. In one series of short bursts, Preston brilliantly leaps from crisis conclusion to crisis combustion.

So we in the audience are left to ponder, does it really matter what happened in the past? Or does what we remember become more important than what actually happened?

ing in various combinations deliver one intense rendition after another filled with their personal hopes for some relief, offering 27 blues flavored pieces straight from the 1930s gut of Depression Era struggles in gritty cities, nearly 100 years ago.

Award winning Sheldon Epps first conceived of this revue in 1980, opening a successful Broadway run in 1982, followed by an equally popular London production in 1987.

Epps found ways to blend the music of such established composers as Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer with the popular blues success of marque names like Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Bessie Smith and others.

From the evergreen favorites “Lush Life” and “Stompin' at the Savoy” to the sly double entendre of “Take Me For A Buggy Ride” to the equally defiant “Wild Women Don't Have the Blues,” no heart left wanting goes unexamined.

Think of this indigo journey as a musical confessional so convincing in its search for sweet release, the capacity audience on opening night at the downtown Temple of Music and Art jumped to its feet in a standing ovation of the joyful discovery to learn what is meant by making it hurt so good.

This remarkable metaphor of a religious experience is carried out in the soaring stage design of Edward E. Haynes Jr. A towering church-like arc is filled with patterned columns that could also represent endless towers of faceless apartment buildings in a shadowy urban setting.

Included in the stage design are setups representing four generic apartments flaunting their ordinariness in cold concern for these star-crossed performers.

Each is given a descriptive title rather than a name. They are: The Lady from the Road (Roz White), The Woman of the World (April Nixon), The Girl with a Date (Camryn Hamm) and The Man in the Saloon (Darryl Reuben Hall). As the titles imply, each of these women represents all women at different stages in their lives.

The man, presumably, stands for all men who end up by themselves in a bar.

There is no dialogue or plot per se but each song is self-contained, telling its own story, adding another chapter to the challenging life of being female.

“Blues in the Night” runs through Feb. 15, with performances at various times Tuesdays through Sundays in the downtown Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Run time is approximately two hours, including intermission.

Tickets are $33-$113. For additional details and reservations, 833-ATC-SEAT (282-7328) or online, atc.org

Gaslight photo 

Another eager audience settles into this pine paneled theater for the holidays which, at the Gaslight, stretch into January.

A true Gaslight Theatre classic has returned in a new production to flaunt its soaring wiles once more across a curtained stage of high notes and evil intentions.