THE Marriage of Figaro is perhaps best known as an opera by Mozart.

But what many people don’t know is the story is based on a play by French dramatist, Pierre Beaumarchais.

And that’s the production being put on by the Colchester Theatre Group next week thanks to Rod Green who has translated and adapted the work.

“I got an attack of the shingles back in 1988,” Rod tells me, “and so during my break from teaching I got the original French transcript and started to translate it.

“The original production was performed by the Colchester Theatre Group in 1989 at the Colchester Arts Centre and in fact I am the only one who appeared in the play back then as well as this current one.”

With 15 in the cast, directed by Rod’s wife, Sara, Beaumarchais’ work was the second in a trilogy of plays detailing the trials and tribulations of Figaro, one time barber in the Barber of Seville and, as he is getting ready to be married to Suzanne, now the servant to the Count Almaviva.

“The plot is near enough the same to the opera,” Rod adds, “but the big thing about this play is it was written just before the French Revolution and it’s basically about the servants running the show.

“That idea of the servants being better than their masters didn’t go down at all well with the French king and in fact Louis XVI said the play was not to be performed.”

The Marriage of Figaro is one of many plays Rod, a former languages teacher, has translated with others including the Barber of Seville and The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, which Rod describes as the Italian Canterbury Tales.

• Marriage of Figaro Headgate Theatre, Chapel Street North, Colchester.

February 17 to 20. 7.45pm with extra 2.30pm performance on the Saturday.

£10, £8 concessions. 01206 366000.

www.headgatetheatre.co.uk