SIMON Callow CBE is sharing a stage with Jesus for nine weeks.

The flamboyant 65-year-old thespian from Streatham is starring in the Belfast Lyric Theatre tour of The Man Jesus, a one-man show whose itinerary takes in the Grand Opera House in York for one night only on Tuesday.

Playwright Matthew Hurt's humanist take on the Gospel of Mark looks back 2,000 years to witness key moments in the life of "the man Jesus" through the eyes of the people who knew him.

"What I hope we are able to do with The Man Jesus is take us back to the precise moment in history when he was living and experience his story as I imagine it felt and looked to the characters around him," says Hurt. "This isn't an attempt to dismiss any of the spiritual dimensions of his life. Instead of looking at the Jesus of Christianity, I want to try to grasp the man religion claimed as its own before legend, politics and sectarianism distorted – for good or bad – the image we have of him.”

Billed as "thought-provoking, thrilling and full of wit", Hurt's show calls on Callow to perform a fresh account of biblical stories, among them the revival of Lazarus, the wedding at Cana and the journey to Jerusalem. His portrayal of the tyrants, traitors and madmen in Jesus’s life asks people of all faiths and none: what sort of a man was able to inspire the history of the world?

Callow says of the play: "I play 12 different characters: Pontius Pilate; Herod Antipas; Mary, Jesus’s mother; his brother, James, and so on. The characters talk about him, sometimes they talk to him, and through them you begin to get a picture of Jesus which is extremely multi-faceted."

What attracted Callow to The Man Jesus? "It attempts to put Jesus into the real world, to enable us to see him as a living human being, which is fascinating," he says. "At least since the Middle Ages, people have been making plays about Jesus."

Playing 12 characters, each of them a full-length portrait, is "very challenging indeed", but Callow's reward is to "enjoy the thrill of performing in a one-man show". "It's the most direct and the oldest way of telling stories, preceding books, plays, television or movies," he says. "And stories bind audiences together, so that the energy in the auditorium rises massively as they experience the spell of the story. Is there any greater satisfaction than hearing a good story? And this one, as the man said, is the greatest one ever told."

Callow has become renowned for his prowess in one-man shows, which began with his solo West End performance of Oscar Wilde's writings, The Importance Of Being Oscar. He has since appeared in The Mystery Of Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd; There Reigns Love, a performance of Shakespeare’s sonnets; Dr Marigold & Mr Chops by Charles Dickens; Being Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate; and Inside Wagner’s Head, written by Callow himself.

Now he is on his travels with The Man Jesus, the greatest story ever, re-told. "I hope the audiences will be profoundly challenged by what Jesus says in the play, and that they'll ask themselves whether he has anything to say to them individually and personally," he says.

So, what comes next for Simon Callow, actor, musician, theatre and opera director and writer of 16 books? "Jesus will take a lot of topping," he says. "Perhaps I’ll play the Holy Ghost next."

Simon Callow in The Man Jesus, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york