TIM Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's original rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, is 45 years old and back on the road in an "explosive new production" by Bob Tomson and veteran impresario Bill Kenwright.

This partnership has co-directed Willy Russell's Blood Brothers for almost 30 years and overseen Evita in the West End too, among many other credits, and they bring that proven track record to invigorating Superstar once more.

Their show is a combination of the retro and the modern: on the one hand you cannot escape the Seventies "hip" lingo ("Hey JC") or the Biblical setting with attire that might be found in a Nativity play, Elvis Vegas show or even Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert.

On the other hand, Pontius Pilate's forces are equipped with riot shields and visors and a camera snaps an incriminating photo, although the directors surely missed a trick in not updating it further to a mobile phone.

Rice and Lloyd Webber's ground-breaking first professional hit recalls the last seven days of Jesus Christ's life in the form of a psychological study of a man alone, or rather two men alone: Christ, on his pre-ordained journey to the Cross, and Judas Iscariot, his betrayer, whose name has been dirt ever since.

Everything is expressed in heightened, sometimes histrionic song in a sung-through musical where Judas has the narrator's role, seeing Jesus's last week through his burning eyes. It is a darker, more complex work than you might have expected from fledgling writers, albeit one in the spirit of late-Sixties and early Seventies musicals with its outrageously camp King Herod (even more so in the hands of Tom Gilling, channelling Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Show).

Around him, the principal casting ticks today's commercial boxes by combining an experienced hand with an X Factor finalist and an Australian ex-pat.

Glenn Carter, in his fourth coming as Jesus after the 1996 West End revival, Broadway and Millennium film recording, is the trusted frontman. Pacing himself for the considerable vocal demands, his operatic rock voice still tackles the falsetto Everest peaks of I Only Want To Say (Gethsemane) with the assurance of a veteran mountaineer. Now 51, however, he has a blond wig that does him no favours, making him look more like Robert Plant than Jesus.

Rachel Adejedi, from the 2009 series of The X Factor, trained in musical theatre and has West End experience in Thriller Live but initially seems tentative as Mary Magdalene, although this fits the heartfelt reverence of I Don't Know How To Love Him and she grows into the role the more she is on stage.

York Press:

Glenn Carter's Jesus Christ

Tim Rogers brings a manic intensity to the traitorous Judas and his voice goes into glorious overdrive in the climactic Jesus Christ Superstar (the one that surely inspired Robbie Williams's Let Me Entertain You).

The ensemble work is at its best in What's The Buzz, while Neil Moors's Caiphas, leader of the men in black, has a voice so deep that a York archaeologist would find a relic in it. Kristofer Harding's Simon Zealotes has his soulful, scene-stealing first-half moment too.

Traditionally, after the power and dazzling glory of the title song, a solemn finale ensues when Jesus dies; no song, no music, only Mary Magdalene crying as the curtain falls and the hushed audience departs. This production chooses to break that spell with a Jesus walk-down, applause and farewell waves from the principals. Maybe this is a concession to our age, our need for noise and whoops, but it is unnecessary all the same; the only wrong note of a thrilling, moving show.

Jesus Christ Superstar, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york