Oscar Wilde’s comedy was billed as a “play of modern life” when it premiered at the Haymarket theatre in London in 1895. It is just as modern now in its central, chiming theme: the clandestine corruptions of outwardly squeaky-clean members of parliament.

Sir Robert Chiltern (Chiké Okonkwo) is the apparently upstanding minister and “ideal husband” to Lady Chiltern (Tamara Lawrance) but his past bears the illicit selling of a cabinet secret to a baron. This threatens to ruin him if he does not appease the blackmailing Mrs Cheveley (Aurora Perrineau).

There are shades of “cash for questions”, and other recent scandals, although the political story does not quite sting as it might. One throwaway line makes the parallel to today but Chiltern’s crime is dismissed as a “sin of one’s youth” and Okonkwo plays him with a winning earnestness.

However, there are other kinds of subversions at work in Nicholai La Barrie’s production with an all-Black cast. Its first, slower half does not quite find its footing in pace and tone but it gains a great big boost of life after the interval with a full, frothy and fun embodiment of Wilde’s farce.

It seems to take its lead from the National Theatre’s campy production of The Importance of Being Earnest, in which Lady Bracknell sported a West Indian inflected accent. The Caribbean twist is much more pronounced here, as is the campness. Some sport plummy accents while others wear colourful headscarves and speak in Caribbean tones. Viscount Arthur Goring (Jamael Westman, fabulously louche) is arch, dandily dressed with Pirates of the Caribbean eyeliner. Emmanuel Akwafo, who plays the Chilterns’ quietly disapproving butler, becomes flouncy in his doubling up as Goring’s servant and is one of the highlights. Jeff Alexander, as Goring’s grumpy father, is another.

The production underlines the ludicrousness of this dissolute, aristocratic gang and its drawing-room mores, making the farce seem all the more farcical. Goring’s middle names – Jesús Mohammad – make overt his global majority status. Other references in the script add to the update, from Beyoncé to Barack Obama.

There are great modernising touches in the soundtrack with numbers by DJ Luck & MC Neat (A Little Bit of Luck), Ms Dynamite (Dy-Na-Mi-Tee) and Ezra Collective (God Gave Me Feet for Dancing) set to super choreography. Rajha Shakiry’s costumes waver between period and modern and are both outrageous and elegant.

The play features Wilde’s typically strong women, such as the powerful, self-determining villain, Mrs Cheveley, although it is a shame that Perrineau appears so wooden in the role and occasionally swallows her words. There is a very Wildean clever minx in Mabel Chiltern (Tiwa Lade).

The camped up nature of it is all the more touching when taking into account the charge of gross indecency that Wilde faced in his lifetime; this play transferred to the Criterion theatre without his name on the programme or playbill. This production is a flamboyant celebration of queerness. Some payback for Wilde?