Handel’s Joshua is not an opera. It’s an oratorio. With typical haste, he dashed it off in four weeks in 1747. Its biblical subject meant that he was prevented, by law, from staging it.

Happily, this law no longer applies. Just as well, since Handel made it quite clear that he visualised his oratorios in theatrical terms.

Charles Edwards’s new production is a shoestring affair. There are no sets: the stage is open to the very back, which does reasonable duty for the walls of Jericho. He sets it in the period immediately before and after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

The story mainly involves the Israelites’ military exploits. But Edwards does his best to inject a little sex amid the violence. He embroiders the mild love story. So Othniel, a young chieftain, enjoys a pre-coital fag with his sweetheart Achsah (daughter of general Caleb), before being caught in flagrante and dunked in a well by his future father-in-law. All good fun, though not in Handel.

Too much of the music is run-of-the-mill, the first Act in particular. It was scrappy here. Thereafter conductor Stephen Layton kept singers and band together.

Most of the drama comes from tenor Daniel Norman’s volatile Joshua and Henry Waddington’s forceful Caleb. Jake Arditti’s flexible countertenor as Othniel and Fflur Wyn’s excellent coloratura as Achsah add depth. An unusually patchy chorus uses scores half the time. It all has the feel of a work in progress.

• Further performances tomorrow and Saturday. www.operanorth.co.uk