I recall, in 1987 I think it was, arriving at our house in Waterloo brandishing a metre-length of tickets for the new season of plays at the Old Vic, at the time when it had been taken over by the impresario Ed Mirvish. 

Perhaps it was because Mirvish was Canadian, rather than British, that he had the sense to recruit, as artistic director, Jonathan Miller, the polymathic firefly and master of all trades whose best work, in recent years, has sadly been performed outside these shores.

Not all the plays in that season were undoubted successes; but none of them were workaday, lacklustre, that’ll do nicely, run of the mill let's not frighten the horses productions, which you’ve forgotten by the following morning.  Even the one that annoyed me most at the time - a version of   Andromaque where the sonorous alexandrines of Racine’s original play were replaced by a jagged and frequently bathetic English translation -  has stuck in my memory.

For Miller has the gift of  taking a familiar old warhorse and putting new life into it by some simple ‘why did nobody think of that before?’ idea, such as his 1982 staging of Rigoletto, set in 1950s Little Italy.

Now if anything can be described as ‘familiar’ it is the Saint Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach. It’s even on my I-Pod, for goodness sake. So, when I took Jane off to the National Theatre last Sunday, I wasn’t anticipating a particularly new experience, though I was surprised (and delighted) to have been able to buy two tickets actually on the stage of the Olivier for the modest sum of £12 a head. (Jane herself had no idea of what was about to happen; she loves surprises, and I hadn’t told her what was in store for us).

In fact, I hadn’t even realised that Miller was involved in the staging until we took our places and looked at the free cast lists that are available for people such as us who are unwilling to fork out the full four quid for a proper programme.

The first sign that something was different was the casual way that singers and musicians, all dressed in casual clothes, mingled around chatting, forming and unforming groups.

Gradually the musicians took their seats, split into two groups, one just a few feet away from where we sat at the back of the stage, the other near the front, each containing  an organ and double bass, five violins, and a pair each of violas, cellos, flutes and oboes.  The ‘choir’ was similarly divided in two, on each side of the stage.  As the sounds of tuning up died away, another casually dressed man arrived, with no fuss, took his place near the frontmost organ, raised his arm, and Bach’s sublime music started up.

Paul Goodwin, the conductor, was also responsible for the English translation from the German.  Not all the soloists were equal in terms of the quality of their diction, so the words were not always as clear as they might have been. Luckily, however, the key role, that of the Evangelist, was taken by Andrew Staples who, not only made this demanding part seem easy, but drew us all into the drama of the story, even those of us not seated in the auditorium. Hadleigh Adams, as Jesus, did not quite reach these heights, but made up for this by an appropriately commanding presence. (See the photo above).

This photo, in fact, reminds me of the series of high spots dotted throughout the performance: when two of the performers detach themselves from the ensemble, and the vocal line is commented on, embellished and woven around by a solo musician.  Detach themselves literally in the case of Jonathan Miller's production.

Traditionally the singer would be one of a line of soloists standing in front of the choir, while the solo musicians would stay seated in their usual places.  Here, however, the solo musicians added the drama of their body movements to the intensity of their playing. I wish I knew which musicians were involved; all I can say here is that I was particularly struck by the sinuous lines of the flute player (above), paired with Hadleigh Adams’s baritone, equally so by the combination of oboe and mezzo-soprano Sally Bruce-Payne, and most of all by the pairing of countertenor James Laing and one of the violinists.

Solo singers and musicians alike were professionals, the orchestra being the Southbank Sinfonia.  The chorus, however, were drawn from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but provided a thoroughly professional performance, though some of the ‘acting’ that they were required to provide smacked a little of amateur night.  But that’s a minor quibble.  The Saint Matthew Passion came alive to us, fresh and new, almost as if it was being performed for the first time.

Amazingly, versions of this staging have been doing the rounds since the early 90s, though not - I think - here in Britain; certainly not at the National Theatre where it is was only allowed nine performances, the last of which was yesterday’s matinee, October the 2nd.

A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country. Who was it wrote that?  Oh yes; Matthew, the Evangelist.