RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
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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