Nicola Lisle talks to director John Ramster about The Merry Opera Company’s dramatic staging of Messiah, which comes to Oxford this weekend

“Up close and very personal” is how director John Ramster describes The Merry Opera Company’s staged version of Messiah.

Now in its fifth year of touring, and about to hit its 50th performance, this has become the company’s signature piece, the one that has really resonated with audiences and keeps being brought back by popular demand.

On Saturday, the production will be at the University Church, Oxford, as part of a nine-date tour that started last week in Nottingham.

So how, exactly, do you stage a work originally intended to be performed as an oratorio?

“I wanted to keep the truth of the oratorio performance, which is a very direct link to the text and a very direct link to the music, and somehow humanise it,” John explains.

“So the gist of it is that twelve strangers happen to gather in a church and they’re all very disturbed. They all have crises in their lives of varying degrees.

“I wrote each of them a back history, so they sing from that point of view. When I sent these out to the original cast, I said I didn’t want them to talk about their characters with each other. So they discover each other onstage.

“The audience gleans their individual stories a little bit. You’ll get that one is an ex-soldier who has issues with violence, and he’s the one that sings Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage Together? So we’re linking into the text.

“We have the basic story of the birth, death and resurrection, and running parallel with that is the story of these twelve people who come together as a group, gain strength from each other and become a community. And that’s what Messiah has been doing for years - strangers gather in a church, they sing Messiah and they become friends.”

Apart from a few cuts in Part 2, the music is untouched, but instead of the usual huge choral forces you normally get in an oratorio setting, the choruses are sung by some or all of the twelve performers.

“Some of the choruses are quartets, some are octets, and the big choruses are all twelve of them,” John says. “And they make a heck of a sound. We’ve got a thrilling cast for this tour, and when they go into the ‘Amen’ at the end, it’s overpowering.”

The set is just a few boxes, which sometimes form mini-stages on which cast members stand and sing. Lighting is whatever each church provides.

“It’s the easiest get-in and get-out for a show ever!” John chuckles. “We do bring in quite a lot of costumes. Everybody’s got three costumes, so that’s 36 costumes. But there’s no set.

“Every night is a first night because you’re in a different venue each time, and the size varies enormously. It means there’s a semi-improvisatory quality to every performance within the structure of the production, and I designed it so that it could expand and contract with each venue. So every performance is different.”

As an experienced director, John has an impressive list of productions under his belt, but this one, he says, is special.

“I’m really proud of it. It’s so simple. It’s completely character and actor driven, and that’s what I love because there’s something very pure about it.”

The Merry Opera Company: Staged Messiah

University Church, Oxford

Saturday, 6pm

Tickets: 01865 305305 or ticketsoxford.com