CELEBRATING the fragility of live performance is one of Fullrogue’s missions and with this inaugural production they consistently challenge the boundaries of theatre.

Marek Horn’s deliberately chaotic script follows the meetings of two friends on a Dorset beach over the last four centuries, loosely using history to explore their changing roles and expectations and wild swimming as the metaphor for their freedom.

The play ranges from the confines of restricting Elizabethan sexual identity through the dawning aspirations of women during the Romantic era and the social upheaval of 20-century inter-war Britain to the present day and troubled issues of identity.

Alice Lamb’s Nell and Annabel Baldwin’s Oscar manically don period costumes with audience assistance, snack continuously and playfully step in and out of character to disrupt time and audience expectations.

Their relationship, as privileged Elizabethan girl and aspiring poet and undergraduate boy, are transformed as they leap through time and social changes, reshaping their outlooks, achievements and relationship.

Director Julia Head allows the chemistry of the two actors to dominate and their sparky exchanges, frequent asides, humour and contemporary idiom has an invigorating freshness.

Their inter-sex friendship, ambiguously explored with an all-female casting, survives the role-swapping and gender tensions in a show brimming with a bright, youthful spontaneity.

While serious issues of changing identities and relationships are sometimes lost in the deliberate, amusing casualness and direct audience engagement that, after all, is what probably what they set out to achieve.

Runs until September 21, box office: bristololdvic.org.uk.