A couple of years ago, veteran actor Max Cullen had an idea for a show about two of Australia's literary legends. "I reckoned I could do Henry Lawson, I'd had a one-man show on him, and I realised how difficult I was to work with," he says.

"I needed someone to play Banjo Paterson."

He asked historian, singer and folklorist Warren Fahey because "he's not an actor, he's never worked with actors, he'll never know the difference, he'll think it's normal actor behaviour".

"I was right."

Fahey says when he was asked, he had to give the matter serious thought.

"I'd been on stage – talks, pantomimes on ABC radio – but I'd never 'frocked up', so to speak."

But then he thought, when else would he get the opportunity for such a challenge at his stage of life, so he agreed.

The two men collaborated on writing and directing Dead Men Talking, bringing Lawson and Paterson back to life, and Fahey says, "They haven't shut up for a year." That's how long the play has been touring around Australia.

The conceit behind Dead Man Talking is that friends and literary rivals Henry Lawson and A. B. "Banjo" Paterson are now in the Leviticus Bar at the Gates of Heaven sharing a drink as they hope to get past St Peter.

Cullen says, "The audience are the angels waiting to get through the Pearly Gates – they get to watch."

What follows is nearly 90 minutes of yarn-spinning, talk and songs as the two literary legends discuss each other's lives and work.

Apparently the heavy-drinking, anorexic Lawson became deaf and Paterson had a very low voice and a lisp so the two performers can only wonder what conversations between them would have been like.

Fahey says, "The songs sung by Lawson and Paterson are from poems published in The Bulletin with tunes put to them in the 19th century. There are some of the well-known ones but we've avoided making it a cliche; some of the material is on the more unusual side."

The rendition of Waltzing Matilda, for example, comes from an Indigenous Pidgin version Fahey collected in Queensland in 1973 that begins: "Oldfella bagman campalonga billabong..."

Fahey and Cullen both feel Lawson and Paterson are in danger of being forgotten by younger generations and that older Australians are the natural audience for Dead Men Talking. Fahey says, "The young ones love it when they see it" but that older people in the regions "come out of the woodwork" to the halls, small theatres and other venues where he's organised performances on the tour.

And both men genuinely love the work of Paterson and Lawson and feel a personal connection to it. Fahey produced a centenary edition of Paterson's 1905 compilation Old Bush Songs in 2005 – continuing the work of preserving Australian bush music before it vanished. Cullen, whose family comes from Narromine – "My grandfather was a drover and my grandmother was a blacksmith" – remembers the works being recited at home, in particular The City of Dreadful Thirst, a Paterson poem with the line, "That cloud that came to Narromine was just a cloud of thirst."

The play has been performed twice at the National Folk Festival and once at Tuggeranong Arts Centre on its travels but Fahey says it's changed and evolved over the course of the run and they do a bit of ad libbing now in character. And this will be Canberrans' last chance to see Dead Men Talking.

"After this, it's going in mothballs – this is the last regional tour," Fahey says.

Both he and Cullen have books on the go and they are also collaborating on a follow-up play, Dead Men Laughing, in which two more famous Australians from yesteryear will posthumously unite at the Leviticus Bar. Cullen will play print humorist Lennie Lower and Fahey will play stage and radio comedian Roy "Mo" Rene. It will tour next year and Canberra will be one of the destinations.