YORK Light Opera Company has staged 53 shows since Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice gave birth to Jesus Christ Superstar in 1970.

The company has never before climbed the high peaks of this classic slice of rock opera and, as chance would have it, the sudden and unexpected rise of Lowestoft retro rockers The Darkness has made this somewhat histrionic form of music newly popular once more.

Company newcomer Henry Bird has the flowing locks, the beard and intense eyes for the role of Jesus but, tellingly, the 19-year-old university student also plays and sings in the York band Coma, whose music is rooted in the classic, operatic rock of the early Seventies, falsetto flourishes and all.

Schooled in musical theatre in his six years with Flying Ducks Youth Theatre, Bird hits the heights and the high notes in a powerful central performance that wholly justifies the decision of director Bev Jones to cast him in the lead role in his York Light debut.

The test lies as ever not only in stage presence, which he has in abundance, but also in his singing of I Only Want To Say (Gethsemane) at the beginning of Act Two, and Bird performs it with passion and feeling, rightly receiving a rapturous response.

If Bird is the fledgling of the show, then Rory Mulvihill has been there, done that. In the York Mystery Plays, he has played Jesus and the Devil, and here he plays the traitor, Judas, with an almost manic intensity. This is the role that puts the rock into the rock opera, and Mulvihill has the lung-busting vocal power to hit the ground running in the opening Heaven On Their Minds.

After a death scene so authentic that women in the audience screamed in shock, he leads the climactic signature tune, Jesus Christ Superstar, with resolute determination not to be outshone by the stairway of heavenly angels, arrayed behind him in dazzling white and silver.

Julie-Anne Smith's Mary Magdalene stands out as much as her crimson dress, singing the ever lovely I Don't Know How To Love Him with heartfelt reverence. Dave Blaker's deep-voiced Caiaphas must have tested the Theatre Royal's foundations; Ralph Williams's Pilate twists like a snake through Trial By Pilate; and Mike Bindon's Peter catches the eye too.

The production favours a vintage Superstar dress code, and Bev Jones's musical arrangements are dramatic and haunting while relishing the Seventies excesses.

After the power and the glory, the solemn finale is full of awe, the stage bare but for the echoing sound of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene's crying. A case of less is more.

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Updated: 09:51 Thursday, February 26, 2004