The journalist Jeffrey Bernard would wake up, smoke in bed for 30 minutes “contemplating the horror of having to write a column” and then start work at his desk – his creative flow lubricated by orange juice, topped up with vodka. Then he would head to a place he regarded as his office which, because it was a pub, opened at precisely 11am.

The Coach & Horses on Greek Street in London’s Soho inspired the hit West End play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, which imagines the writer locked in the pub overnight. Now an intriguing new version of the play will be intimately performed in the Coach & Horses.

“It will feel like you are locked in the pub with him,” said the play’s director James Hillier. “As theatre audiences we’ve changed a lot over the last 10 years, people are all so much more up for experience as well as story. And this is a brilliant story of a man who you can connect with, a man who can make you laugh and hopefully cry.”

Bernard was best known for his Spectator column Low Life, described by Jonathan Meades as a “suicide note in weekly instalments”, which ran in the 1970s.

It was packed with funny observations, for example, noting that the mass murderer Dennis Nilsen had wrapped a victim’s head in a copy of the Guardian: “Beware of people with a penchant for social work.” It was also full of anecdotes about his life in the Coach & Horses, run then by Norman Balon, “the rudest landlord in London”.

Bernard said Soho was his Disney World, a place full of “poets, painters, prostitutes, bookmakers, runners, bohemians, bums, cafe philosophers, crooks and cranks”.

The Keith Waterhouse play was named after the words that appeared in the Spectator when Bernard failed, as he often did, to deliver his column. It premiered in 1989 with Peter O’Toole in the title role, for which he won an Olivier award. The role was later played by James Bolam and Tom Conti.

Robert Bathurst, best known for Cold Feet and Toast of London, will play Bernard. The actor said he jumped at the opportunity: “It’s so obviously a good idea, and appealingly odd. It brings Jeffrey Bernard’s journalism on to the stage, his own version of himself, not necessarily how others saw him.”

Bathurst added: “It’s a brilliantly funny, sour and surprisingly moving manifesto for the right of people to destroy their liver and wallet in any way they choose.”

Hillier has been given permission by the writer’s estate to make changes to the play so it becomes a one-man show, more suitable for an immersive performance. On Saturday nights there will be midnight lock-in performances.

Alastair Choat, the landlord at the Coach & Horses, had the idea of staging the play in the pub. He said one reason was to pay tribute to Balon, now 92, as a great man who deserved his reputation for rudeness. It is also as a last throw of the dice in a long-running battle Choat has been having with the freeholders, the pub chain Fuller’s.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peter O’Toole at the Coach & Horses pub in Soho in June 1999. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Choat said he had been fighting eviction for years and in June will have to leave after 13 years at the pub. He called it a “corporate takeover” which he claimed threatens the character of the Soho institution. He said: “This is a boozer … Forget the drinking, it is people coming in and talking and sharing stories and finding out what is going on and learning and meeting new people.”

Fuller’s have talked about returning the pub to its “glory days”, Choat said. “The glory days were leaky toilets and sticky carpet and Norman telling everyone to fuck off.”

There appears little sign of Fuller’s changing its mind. A company spokesperson said: “The Coach & Horses is an amazing and historic pub in Soho and it should be one of the gems in our managed pubs and hotels business. As a result, we will be making a significant financial investment in this fantastic site and bringing it back into our managed estate. We have a history of preserving iconic pubs – and this will be no exception.”

• Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell will run on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 7 May to 1 June