PLAYING all nine characters in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the tiny Tara Theatre in London, Kudzanayi Chiwawa and Ayesha Casely-Hayford took such liberties with its content and structure that one might have expected the whole venture to fall apart.

Yet the play was so lovingly bashed about that it came through the ordeal with flying colours, as did the pair themselves.

Operating within a minimalist set and dressed only in white T-shirts and black trousers, Chiwawa and Casely-Hayford offered up a deliberately unruly interpretation of Wilde’s farcical goings on, blurring time, space and boundaries in a way that added an extra dimension to the humour.