"ORIGINAL and highly topical, sparky and rather naughty in parts." Not a description many might expect of a Greek classic. But it's what's promised in a forthcoming production of Aristophanes' Clouds, which will owe as much to Have I Got News for You as it does to ancient Greece.

The adaptation of the Greek masterpiece was a project Eddie Tomlinson was working on when he died from carbon monoxide poisoning in Lebanon last year, translating it from the ancient Greek and emailing it, bit by bit, back to Hereford.

The plot centres on imbecilic bumpkin Strepsiades, whose playboy son has landed him with debts a farmer's salary just won't pay. The route out of ruin turns out be renouncing Zeus and his outmoded fellow gods and pledging devotion to the Clouds ....

"Eddie's adaptation is original and, at the time he was working on it, highly topical," explains Siobhan de Souza, head of classics at Hereford Cathedral School and Eddie's former classics teacher.

"He was about halfway through when he died, and members of kaloi k'agathoi, a theatre group dedicated to bringing Greek drama to a wider audience, are now finishing it. Topicality is key, as it is in Have I Got News For You, and it would always have been changed as we went along to reflect current events."

Open auditions for the project will be held in Hereford on the weekend of May 19-20, and kaloi k'agathoi, of which Eddie Tomlinson was a founder member, want the cast and crew to be, as far as possible, local.

"Eddie was passionate about Herefordshire," explains Siobhan. "We want to give young people here the chance to work with leading talent from Oxford, Cambridge and London."

Auditions will take place in the Zimmerman Building, Church Street, Hereford, on Saturday, May 19, from 10am to 4.30pm, and on Sunday, May 20, from 1.30pm to 7pm.

Auditionees will be expected to prepare one piece and one poem to be found on the website www.kaloikagathoi.co.uk (they need not be learned by heart) as well as a song - please bring a copy of the music.

For further information, contact clouds@kaloikagathoi.co.uk.