The moment when Basil Fawlty convinces himself a freshly-insulted guest is actually an incognito hotel inspector is one of the highlights of modern comedy.

But the scenario of mistaken identity, with its attendant sycophancy and hilariously catastrophic results, has its prototype in a 19th-Century Russian play.

One of the most famous comedies in world theatre, Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector emerged in 1936 as a brutal satire on human manners.

Having lost none if its entertainment value or bite, it now forms the fulcrum of Chichester Festival's Con Art season, with TV impressionist Alistair McGowan in the title role.

In fact, the revival, which opens next Friday, has already provided more than one case of mistaken identity - not a few people have wondered how on earth Chichester could consider David Kelly a fit subject for comedy.

But while David Farr's rival The UN Inspector, now showing at the National Theatre, updates Gogol to an ex-Soviet republic where modern-day aides plot over cappuccinos, Alistair Beaton's adaptation for Chichester steers closer to the original.

In a small town at the back of nowhere, corruption is rife and the Mayor and his cronies have got it made. Then they learn they're going to be subject to an undercover government inspection - and panic. Mistaking a penniless nobody for the master of their fate, they swiftly fall victim to their own stupidity and greed - while McGowan's Khlestakov merrily rakes in the bribes.

"It is set in a highly stratified society based on 14 grades of class, to which everyone who was not a serf had to belong," explains Beaton.

"But it isn't the structure itself that's interesting, it's the consequences. Everyone is always trying to figure out how much more important other people are.

"The play is about skilled sycophancy - that's why it has this incredible universal quality. The unbridled greed of those in power is what unites 1836 and now. Nothing much has changed."

Tickets £10-£34, call 01243 781312