A sketch about un perroquet mort, anyone? It's one of Edinburgh 2003's unlikeliest offerings: the first theatrical staging of Monty Python's Flying Circus. By a French company. In French. According to Michael Palin: "Sometimes they hit the mark exactly, sometimes they miss the mark, and sometimes they miss it so completely that it is quite extraordinary." With endorsements like this, it's hard to fathom whether producer Rémy Renoux's show should be taken seriously or is no more than a Pythonesque prank itself.
According to Renoux, who is all cat-that-got-the-cream smiles, the idea came about when he collaborated with the Terries Gilliam and Jones on a production of the musical Irma La Douce for the French National Theatre. "I said to them, 'why don't you ever give the rights for the Flying Circus on stage?' Their reason was that some of them didn't want their parts to be played by English actors. So I said, 'what about a French-language production?'" To Renoux's huge surprise, the Terries green-lighted the suggestion. The other remaining Pythons - and their lawyers - presently followed suit.
"I've been a long time dreaming of having the Flying Circus on stage," says the producer. France is besotted with Python, he says. "This is the country of Ionesco, so absurdity is in our theatrical culture." Renoux claims to know "four or five very famous French comedy troupes who say, 'we are here thanks to what Monty Python did on the BBC'." The pressure, then, was on. "You shouldn't fail," says Renoux, "when you have, for the first time, the rights to Monty Python's Flying Circus on the stage."
His first task was to assemble a creative team. Renoux chose a director, Thomas Le Douarec, who "didn't know about Flying Circus really. He doesn't speak much English."
No less radically, the cast was to include a woman, Marie Parouty. "It was very clear for me," says the producer, "that we needed at least one woman. And [Gilliam and Jones] both said, 'yes, definitely. If Monty Python was to start again today, it would be half and half'."
From the outset, Renoux's intention was to steer clear of mimicry in favour of free interpretation. The cast aren't comedians, they're theatre actors. "It is nothing like copying what the Pythons did," says Renoux. "We never, ever tried to cast an actor as John Cleese, or an actor as Terry Jones. It's the director's job to choose which actor is going to do which sketch, without necessarily making any reference to whichever Python first played the part. We had a balance to find in terms of respecting the original, but also trying to twist it."
It's the differences that make this French Python so engaging. It's an altogether more rumbustious affair than the TV show. Out goes the clever-clever Oxbridge atmosphere of the UK Pythons. In comes the feel of a freewheeling cabaret, replete with sassy high-kicking MC. Out goes the greyish palate of the west London landscape in which much of Python was filmed. Renoux's floor show is flooded in swirling stage lights, while the company deliver most of their 25 sketches out front, scrambling over the audience in full rock-climbing clobber, peeing on the front row while playing incontinent Olympic athletes.
The sketches, says Renoux, were selected to include "some really visual moments, so the English audience wouldn't be too bored with subtitles". There's no shortage of extraneous physical business here, either, although "we try hard to stick to the idea of the original sketches, because it's not necessary to add something that will be less funny than what was written."
Mind you, there's been a little tinkering with the scripts, says Renoux. The Python's song Sit on my Face has evolved into Cum in my Mouth. Renoux is full of respect for the Python's "irreverence" and claims that "Cum in my Mouth is the next step. This is what they would have written today. And they really laughed when they saw how we'd translated that song."
On first night at Edinburgh, the buccaneering atmosphere was only heightened by failing technology and a cast who seemed to find their on stage subtitles quite the funniest thing in the show. Subtitling, says Renoux, is "a matter of rhythm. We've worked hard at it. It's not like putting subtitles on an opera, which, when you sing, you take a very long time to complete a sentence." Comedy, famously, is all in the timing. Trying to subtitle quick wit is like catching sand in a sieve.
Previewing the show in London last night, the company tried performing the dead parrot sketch in English. It made them realise that "we shouldn't get into the English language too much", says Renoux. "It's not fun to do that Maurice Chevalier thing in the theatre, you know? Besides, we are licensed for a French-speaking show and nothing more."
If the result is a production that's more loveable cultural curio than all-out hit, that won't stop the French Python returning to London in glory later this year. "We will go to London with the licensed authorisation of the Pythons," crows Renoux, "which is a confirmation of the fact that they are completely crazy."
And then, the world is the Pythons' oyster now that their scripts are officially up for grabs. "Ever since we played," says Renoux, "the whole world is asking, 'why the French and not us?' The Germans are asking, the Italians are asking, the Spanish are asking."
For the sketch about der tote Papagei, watch this space.
· At Pleasance One until August 10. Box office: 0131-556 6550.