C aryl Churchill’s time-hopping 1979 drama is not revived as often as it might be, perhaps because it is so magnificently madcap. Bouncing from a first act satirising Victorian life in colonial Africa to a second act exploring sexual liberation in 1970s London, it could easily roll off-kilter in the wrong hands. There is also its complicated framework. Cloud 9 is a play in two distinct parts which follows some of the characters a century on, although they only age 25 years in that time and are played by different actors through ironic cross-casting.

Thankfully this crisp, handsome and note-perfect revival lands in exactly the right hands with director Dominic Cooke , clear as crystal despite the complications, sizzling with satire but showing itself to be a deadly serious, and still highly topical, play about identity beneath its playful sending up of everything from empire and Britishness to the confinements of marriage.

Dangerously contained anger … Eloka Ivo in Cloud 9 at the National Theatre.…