THE Guild of Building in charge of Creation. A female Jesus in ripped T-shirt, jeans and sandals. A weapon made from selfie sticks. Judgement Day T-shirts for sale. A blues singer with an electric guitar hollering at the Harrowing of Hell. A director called (Alan) Heaven and the chance to play 10th Egyptian on a day with a cast of hundreds.

Welcome to the 2018 York Mystery Plays, brought forth by the York Festival Trust and Guilds of York on pageant wagons in the tradition of these outdoor plays, first performed from dawn to dusk on Corpus Christi Day. For the past 20 years, the Guilds have reactivated a selection of the plays every four years at “stations” around the historic streets, through which the wagons wend their way, pulled by stoical teams, and fronted by reedy early musicians and dignitaries from each Guild, ancient or, in the case of the Guild of Media Arts , new for 2018.

Whereas the York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens in 2012 and York Minster in 2016 presented a multitude of plays – arguably too many – in grand settings, the street versions benefit from a tighter focus, a freer spirit of performance and Tardis-like wagon designs. This year’s artistic director and Pageant Master, Tom Straszewski, has shown innovation in teaming five Old Testament plays with five New Testament stories, under the linking titles of Creation, Temptation, Betrayal , Sacrifice and Liberation, concluding with the end to end all ends, Judgement on Judgement Day.

Performed by Ravens Morris for the Company of Merchant Adventurers, with a Plague plaque, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, God in a gold mask and multi-coloured dreadlocks, the Whore-Queen of Babylon and an Apocalypse Pamphleteer, this was a spectacular finale to Sunday’s four-hour cycle of plays.

Accompanied by The Bertie Set’s street music, and played in white wedding attire and fairy lights, Steampunk met a Caribbean carnival in this “song of death and hope and celebration of being alive”, a scene of salvation in our troubled times. Here was reaffirmation that the York Mystery Plays have contemporary resonance, drawing together disparate people to watch, maybe initially out of curiosity, but then through the power of performance in song, story and costume, in the bustling Sunday shopping streets at St Helen’s Square and St Sampson’s Square.

The picnic and rug atmosphere of College Green was a quieter way to dip in and out of the plays for free, while the hardy perennials who prefer a seated staging could settle down for the afternoon at King’s Manor, under cover too, on a day when the rain made only cameo appearances.

Sunday (September 16) offers a second chance to see these 11 plays at The Green, The Fair, The Streets and The Stage, and meanwhile Make It York’s keenness to establish evening life for Shambles Market has led to a new initiative, The Mysteries After Dark, on Wednesday evening when James Swanton's Devil will play master of ceremonies to five wagon plays from 6.30pm. Could this be the start of an annual event?