The Mystery men

This former managing editor of the Oxford University Press for 17 years "gave it all up" in 1989, retiring to start writing plays, a change of path that has borne ripe fruit, not least with this Millennium production.

The Yorkshireman's adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya is running on Broadway with Sir Derek Jacobi and Roger Rees; next Thursday the Mystery Plays open at York Minster.

"So I've got shows on in York and New York," he says with quiet pride. "Writing for this production is a once-in-a-thousand years opportunity: the Mystery Plays in York Minster in the Millennium year: you'd have to go some way to find another experience to cap that."

Mike has worked with the 2000 Mystery Plays' associate director David Hunt on more than one occasion and has known artistic director Gregory Doran for many years. Put the three together, add Poulton's reputation from his adaptations of Three Sisters and Fortune's Fool, and Gregory asked him to cut and edit the York Cycle of Mystery Plays with its 47 plays.

"Having had a lot of fun with adapting the medieval miracle play St Erkenwald, medieval dialogue was becoming my passion, so the opportunity to do these Mystery Plays was a wonderful one," he says.

Mike soon gravitated to creating his own new adaptation, ripping up his pruning and trimming and starting again, investing the characters with personality and individuality rather than merely lines to recite, as he worked his nocturnal shifts at his writing base in Ollerton, near Bradford ("I may spend a lot of time in London, but Yorkshire is the only place I can write," he says).

He believes the Plays are as relevant today as ever, and it "doesn't need a pair of jeans on stage to emphasise that". "The rule of thumb was that I wanted to hear this gutsy language resonating around the building, and that could only be done in the original language, but in retaining as much of that language as possible it also had to be comprehensible and accessible," he says.

"We're not interested in creating an academic museum piece; the audience must be the priority. The Plays must be an uplifting experience, and then there is the humour too. Humour lubricates these Plays."

Among other qualities, it is the humour that Gregory Doran believes Mike Poulton has captured so well, and the artistic director is similarly enthusiastic in his praise for the Millennium Mystery Plays' composer and musical director.

Doran calls Richard Shephard a "hidden treasure of York". "It was a gift to have someone of his calibre on the doorstep," Gregory said.

By doorstep, he means the Minster School, where Mr Shephard is the headmaster (as well as being Sub-Chamberlain of York Minster). He is the one York member of the production-team high table, familiar with performing in Northern Europe's largest Gothic cathedral.

Richard - who will be conducting out of sight of the audience behind a pillar - has written music for a ten-piece ensemble: dramatic, heralding trumpets, supplemented by two French horns; cello and clarinet for underscoring; oboe for its soulful, exotic qualities; "virtually every percussion instrument you can think of"; and the Minster organ "to make the building rumble".

"It's been a great privilege to be asked to write such an important piece, largely because of the scale of the production," he says. "I hope the music is approachable, because if music doesn't communicate, it ceases to have a point.

"This is a piece that people will hear once in their life unless they buy the £10 CD, and while I say the music should be subordinate to the performances, I'd like to think some of it will stick in the mind as the audience heads home."

York Millennium Mystery Plays, York Minster, June 22 to July 22. Box office: 01904 673535.