Ben
Brantley

October 5, 2015

Sex, in all meanings of the word, is something nobody ever sorts out entirely. Its joys, sorrows, variations and complications are the subjects of countless academic tomes and self-help books, of pulp romances and classic novels. But few writers have come closer to making sense of the hormonal urges that rule, transport and disrupt our lives than Caryl Churchill does in “Cloud Nine,” which opened on Monday night in a glorious revival by the Atlantic Theater Company. That’s because Ms. Churchill (“Top Girls,” “Love and Information”), one of the wisest and bravest playwrights on the planet, understands that sex is endlessly fluid, no matter the time, place or culture in which it is practiced. More than three decades ago — when “trans” as a prefix most commonly meant something to do with automobiles she dared set up camp in that hazy frontier land where the boundaries of gender and the rules of attraction blur and dissolve. That’s the terrain in which “Cloud Nine,” a portrait of an archetypal British family in flux, takes place. And James Macdonald’s pheromone-fresh production, which features a deliciously mutable cast of seven, makes it clear that today we’re still living in this gray zone of polymorphous selves, whether we admit it or not.