The man behind the hit Jewish film comedy Leon the Pig Farmer is to direct his first stage play, "a Monty Pythonesque look at the Exodus story".

NotMoses is the story of a crying baby who is plucked from his basket by a princess but is dumped back into the Nile when she sees a nicer baby, Moses.

Writer and director Gary Sinyor said this irreverent look at the biblical stories had been inspired by Monty Python's Life of Brian and Rowan Atkinson's television comedy Blackadder.

The show's 10-week run will begin in March 2016 at the Arts Theatre in London's West End.

Mr Sinyor said working on the play has been a "huge amount of fun.

"With a film you don't really interact with the audience, whereas with a play you are doing things that involve them - things that you could never get away with in a film."

For NotMoses, the audience will take on the role of the Children of Israel, and characters on stage will directly address them.

Mr Sinyor, who has written, directed and produced films since the 1990s, scored a box-office success in 1992 with Leon the Pig Farmer, about a Jewish estate agent from north London who discovers that his birth parents are running a piggery in Yorkshire.

In-deed, NotMoses began life as a film script about six years ago .

The play deals with the issue of fundamentalism, "hopefully in an entertaining way", said Mr Sinyor.

"Religion lends itself well to comedy. It's a surreal approach where you can bring the modern into the anc-
ient world."