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Theatre Review: The Importance of Being Earnest
An off-the-wall reinterpretation of an Oscar Wilde classic comes up trumps
In Earnest: Ayesha Casely-Hayford and Kudzanayi Chiwawa
[Harry Elletson] 
FIONA O CONNOR recommends an unflinching depiction of child sexual abuse and its aftershocks, set in a working-class Liverpool family
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PAUL DONOVAN relishes the spectacle of a 1950s detective in pursuit of a 500-year-old murder mystery
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
The Importance of Being Earnest
Tara Theatre, London
PLAYING all nine characters in Oscar Wilde’s best-loved comic drama, Kudzanayi Chiwawa and Ayesha Casely-Hayford take such liberties with its content and structure that one might expect the whole venture to fall apart in a tangled heap.
Yet the play is so lovingly bashed about that it comes through the ordeal with flying colours, as do the pair themselves.
Operating within a minimalist set and dressed only in white T-shirts and black trousers, Chiwawa and Casely-Hayford offer up a deliberately unruly interpretation of Wilde’s farcical goings-on and, in blurring time, space and boundaries, add an extra dimension to the humour already on offer.
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