A composer who has lost his mojo, a soprano cast low by a sex scandal, a bishop climbing the ecclesiastical greasy pole and a German king of England doing his best to fit in. Such are the ingredients stirred into US playwright Tim Slover’s A Joyful Noise, the story of the making of Handel’s Messiah pitched in the key of comic drama.

We meet Handel (played by Nicholas Papademetriou) suffering the arrows of ill health and spiralling debt. Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II and Handel’s staunch backer, has recently died, and his operas are on the nose with novelty-seeking Londoners. The curtain dropped on his most recent project, the opera Deidamia, after just three performances.

Angela Johnston and Nicholas Papademetriou in A Joyful Noise. Photo © JN Foyer Photography

Enter Charles Jennens (Mason Phoumirath), a landowner-librettist with a new idea: the story of Christ told in oratorio form, with a text compiled from fragments of biblical scripture. Hardly a money spinner, you’d think, and the anxious Handel can’t see the point. Moreover, the church – embodied by Bishop Egerton (Matthew Abotomey) – is outraged, and the two women Handel has approached to sing it – the scandal-mired Susannah Cibber and the tempestuous Drury Lane diva Kitty Clive – can’t bear to be in the same room.

Slover’s play, which is also the basis for an upcoming film starring Anthony Hopkins, The King of Covent Garden, is solidly researched and enlightening to some extent, but his characters lack the kind of bandwidth to make them theatrically compelling. Handel is a grump but essentially a good egg, and the King (Christopher Stollery) is quite likeable for a Hanoverian. In the bosom of Kitty Clive (Angela Johnston) there’s room for outrage and a heart of gold, and Susannah Cibber (Laila Chesterman) is more outraged than outrageous.

Laila Chesterman in A Joyful Noise. Photo © JN Foyer Photography

Composer Charlotte Leamon gives us hints and echoes of Handel in her score, but the work steers around – none too elegantly at times – the need to have actors deliver Handel’s music. Still, what little there is is a challenge for performers without an opera voice.

Opening night revealed a production that needs some attention to rhythm and momentum at times, though that will likely come as the season unfolds.

A Joyful Noise may not itself reach the heights of its subject, but it’s a worthwhile reminder that no work of art is God-given and that many, if not most, are birthed in puddles of doubt, worry and controversy.

A Joyful Noise plays at the Greek Theatre, Marrickville until 19 September.