In the following essay, Amoko argues that Churchill's Cloud Nine repeatedly equates gender and sexual oppression with racial and colonial oppression.

In the following essay, Barber examines masculinity and conformity in Cloud Nine.

In the following review, Rich provides a mixed assessment of Cloud 9, stating that "the acting buttresses the writing considerably. "

In the following assessment of Cloud Nine during its London run, Rorrison judges the plot confused, with no clear relation between the two parts of the play.

[Act One of Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 is] a dizzying and delectable farce…. Her emphasis is on both "white" and "man"—on race and sex, though particularly on the latter. From the first scene, Churchill … is clearly intent on upsetting our preconceptions about both. (p. 564)

In the following review of the New York production of Cloud 9, Watt considers the play "ill-balanced, " faulting the startling shift in scene and tone between the two acts.

["Cloud 9"] may not transport the audience all the way to Cloud 9—but it surely keeps us on our toes. The evening's subject is sexual confusion, and Miss Churchill has found a theatrical method that is easily as dizzying as her theme. Not only does she examine a cornucopia of sexual permutations—from heterosexual adultery right up to bisexual incest—but she does so with a wild array of dramatic styles and tricks…. Miss Churchill, as you might gather, is one d...

If any liberationist purpose underlies this diptych of British sexuality under the reign of two dear Queens, Caryl Churchill has wisely left it well concealed. The only didactic point that occurred to me after [viewing Cloud Nine] … was that its abrupt contrast between seething lust in a Kiplingesque colonial outpost and polymorphous experimentation in modern London illustrated the decline of farce writing in direct proportion to the relaxation of moral taboo. That begs the question that Miss Churchi...

In this review of the London production, Curtis applauds the way in which Churchill offered an "adroit and amusing exposure of what goes on behind the masks of conventional behaviour" in Cloud Nine.

[Cloud 9 is] a very funny play full of odd dramatic spasms. It probably helps to have an interest in England and its former empire with its setting sun. Yet beyond this, it is fundamentally a play about love relationships to which that fading Empire merely provides the backcloth. The play is in two distinct parts. The first is Africa in 1880…. The second part is London in 1980, although as the playwright Caryl Churchill is at ambiguous pains to point out, "… but for the characters it is...

[Cloud Nine] takes a leaf or two out of what used to be called our island's story and tears them up into shreds. We begin on an outpost of empire in the African jungle circa 1900; we end in a London park and a recreation hut circa 1979. To highlight the caricature a black is played by a white, a woman by a man, an infant by a grown person. The result is a little bit like an extended Farjeon revue sketch…. Ms. Churchill gives an adroit and amusing exposure of what goes on behind the masks of co...