You don’t have to be familiar with The Importance of Being Earnest to enjoy Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, but it definitely helps — you will ‘get’ more of the jokes, and enjoy the way Wilde’s text is seamlessly juxtaposed with Stoppard’s. In the OTG’s production, at Lady Margaret Hall’s new Simpkins Lee Theatre, this intriguing and imaginative play is exceptionally well handled, the humour and themes brought out with clarity and pizzazz.

Set in Zurich during the First World War, the play concerns James Joyce, Lenin and artist Tristan Tzara, whose lives become increasingly and bizarrely entwined. While writing Ulysses, Joyce puts on a production of The Importance, casting British consular official Henry Carr as Algernon. It ends badly when Carr sues Joyce for the cost of a pair of trousers, and Joyce counter-sues for slander and the cost of tickets. Meanwhile, Lenin plots revolution and Tzara tries to promote the absurdist art movement of Dadaism. Stoppard takes these real events and combines them with a generous helping of poetic licence — with hilarious results.

The play takes the form of a series of reminiscences by an aged Carr, who struggles to recall the exact details, and some of his memories have to be replayed, emerging differently each time. Among an impressive cast, Alistair Nunn stands out in the central role of Henry Carr, cleverly drawing distinctions between the young Carr and the elderly Carr, and speaking with fluency and mastery. Tim Bearder is strongly cast as Tzara, and he sustains his Romanian accent well, while Fleur Yerbury-Hodgson and Monica Nash are appealing as their love interests, Cecily and Gwendolen. But there are no weak links in this cast; everyone plays their part superbly well, breathing fresh life into this witty farce.

Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH, until Saturday. Box office: 01865 305305 or visit www.ticketsoxford.com.