WHEN you really think about it, John Cleese is the perfect person to adapt a Farce.

After all, as the great man tells me himself, 'Fawlty Towers were actually just little 30 minute farces'.

In a way it's kind of absurd that I'm even talking to the comedy legend, albeit over the phone as he suns it up in Los Angeles, where he now lives, while I'm sat in the office of the Mercury Theatre.

The reason for our transatlantic chat is the up-coming Mercury production of Georges Feydeau's Bang Bang, which John has adapted and long time friend, Nicky Henson is directing.

"Interestingly," John tells me, "the first time I came across the play it was through reading a bad American translation and I didn't think it was any good.

"A week later I picked it up again and started reading the second act, which is when I suddenly got interested. It had a wonderful plot and was very funny and by the time I had got to Act 3, well I was jumping up and down with excitement.

"In the end it took me three weeks to get the first Act written but then two weeks to do Act 2 and just a week to do the last Act."

But after completing the job in hand, John then needed someone to take the project forward.

"Nicky and I have known each other for 51 years," he adds. "I met him in the first days of working for the BBC. It was March 1966 and I was filming for the Frost Report.

"He's a wonderful Farcer, in the original cast of Noises Off, so when I finished the translation I insisted on Nicky directing it."

After leaving it with his agent in London the project stalled for a few months before a friend of Nicky's suggested they take it to the Mercury Theatre, which I suggest was a natural choice because in the episode of Fawlty Towers that Nicky appears in, he remarks on the tattoo he's just got done when he was in Colchester.

"I had forgotten all about that," John laughs, "oh I love those kind of things, brilliant. But actually the real reason was we fell in love with the theatre and in particular Tracey Childs (the Mercury Theatre's producer) who made us feel so welcome and was so adept we knew we were in safe hands."

Based on Feydeau's original French Farce, Monsieur Chasse, the play sees Leontine, a respectable lady of high society, in danger of being hoodwinked by her husband Duchotel, who says he's off hunting, except his prey is not four-legged animals.

While he is away (the Bang Bang of the title), back at home his lifelong friend comes calling – and he’s on the hunt too. Will Leontine get caught in his sights, or instead set a trap of her own?

"A lot of different things made me laugh when I was growing up," John says, "a certain kind of comedy typified by Spike Milligan and The Goons but when I went to the theatre, the first thing that made me really laugh were Farces. I didn't the word Farce at the time but that's what it was.

"I remember going to the National Theatre's production of Feydeau's A Flea in her Ear. Jacques Charon had came over to London with Comedie-Francais to direct it and the production had actors like Albert Finney and Geraldine McEwan in it. That was the first time I had seen Farce being performed by superb actors.

"Most Farce is not done particularly well but that's because it's not being performed by top class actors. That's where it gets its bad reputation as crude and over the top and not very funny. Farce done well can sweep you off your feet, it's enormously funny and clever. It produces the completely helpless kind of laughter better than any other kind of comedy because it lives in a world of heightened reality. So if it’s done well it should be acted with extreme seriousness at all times.

"It can often start out almost quietly, setting the plot which can then unfold, and you need to believe the characters from the very start. So it has to be played in a very real style. Then as the complications of the plot multiple, the actors become more and more keyed up, and finally frantic, in their attempts to stop something dreadful from happening – often the revelation of a secret that one of them is trying to keep."

Judging by John's infectious enthusiasm I ask whether adapting Farces might be the future for the comedian and whether Python fans can look forward to any more reunions.

"No, I don't think that will be happening again," he says, "and I do find writing much more satisfactory than performing, it's just performing pays ten times more than writing.

"I certainly would never stop writing because as I said, I enjoy that enormously. I also like talking and performing to audiences.

"Doing shows with Eric [Idle] for audiences in Australia and American has been enormous fun but at the end of the day you are saying pretty much the same thing every night and the joy is to come up with something new.

"I'm going through some more Feydeau Farces at the moment, looking for another one to do, but while some are excellent, there are some which are not so good.

"I'm also acutely aware not every one of his plays are going to work for a modern day audience. For example there's one which has one of the characters trying not to be caught betting and of course these days there are no taboos about that.

"Fortunately there are plenty of other subjects which are just as relevant today as they were in Feydeau's day."

Bang Bang

Mercury Theatre,

Balkerne Gate, Colchester.

February 24 to March 11. 7.30pm and 2.30pm (Thursdays and Saturdays)

£27 to £12 plus concessions. 01206 573948.

www.mercurytheatre.co.uk