You’ve got to admire thespians for their flexibility, their love of improvising. It would seem that a particular bent of some thespians is to play around with classic texts. At the end of the year the Sydney Opera House is hosting a Spiritworks revival of the evergreen ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare’, all 37 plays delivered in 97 minutes.

More to the point, presently upstairs at Belvoir Street, the UK comedy duo, Ridiculusmus, comprising David Woods and Jon Haynes, are performing one of the great comedy classics, Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ as a two hander.

‘Earnest’ starts with them in the two main roles of Jack and Algernon, and then, in no time at all, they are slipping in and out of the roles of Wilde’s numerous other colourful characters.

Jude Kelly directs the production to play at a good humoured, breakneck speed which also meant, at times, that the actors found themselves caught ‘mid-stream’ between characters, cracking up the audience.

Zoe Atkinson’s set comprised a lavish living room of the time. The character changes took place behind a dressing room partition and when the actors briefly darted off stage to come back in another guise. There were some outrageous costumes including a quirky pheasant hat worn by Lady Bracknell.

Woods and Haynes delivered the classic Wilde lines with panache. How could one gems like, ‘I always take my diary with me. I need something sensational to read on the train’.

This production gets the ending just right. It is delivered poignantly, and with of-course Wilde’s classic retort- ‘it is terribly disappointing to come to this late stage of life and realize that one has been earnest all along’.

Another Wildism:-‘I can resist everything but temptation’. Company B’s and Ridiculusmus’s tempting production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ plays upstairs Belvoir till the 30th November.