This time-shifting comedy by the author of Top Girls created a sensation with its Off Broadway premiere, directed by Tommy Tune. A hilarious and scathing parody of colonialism and the Victorian Empire, particularly in its rigid attitude toward sex, Cloud 9 explodes conventions and challenges its audience with humor and wit.

There is Clive, a British functionary; his wife Betty (played by a man); their daughter Victoria (a rag doll); Clive's friend Harry, an explorer; Mrs. Saunders, who runs about dressed in a riding habit; Clive's son Edward, who still plays with dolls (and is played by a woman); and Joshua, an African servant who knows exactly what is really going on. What really is going on is a marvelous sendup and a non-stop round-robin of sexual liaisons. The second act shifts to London in 1980. Though a century has passed, the surviving characters have only aged twenty-five years. Now played by different actors, those repressed sexual longings have evaporated along with the Empire.