While most of this month’s artistic events are centered on a holiday celebrating Jesus’ birth, the Ordway Center is presenting a musical about the other end of his lifespan.

“Jesus Christ Superstar” is a rock-‘n’-roll setting of the “Passion” story, which recounts the last week of Jesus’ life. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “rock opera” began life as an audaciously imaginative record album that deservedly became the biggest seller of 1971. Stage versions have been re-emerging ever since.

Yet I’ve never encountered one that captured the electrifying energy of the original album – until now. Onstage at the Ordway is a tremendously exciting production that avidly embraces the adrenaline-fueled atmosphere of an arena rock show, deftly mixing it with the kind of complex characterizations and relationships you’ll encounter in the best of musical theater and opera.

It’s a briskly paced whirlwind of movement and arrestingly emotional singing that never lets up over the course of its 100 intermission-less minutes. And it might prove the ideal counter programming to the warm and fuzzy fare found on most other area stages.

For “Jesus Christ Superstar” dwells largely in darkness. Rice and Lloyd Webber chose to examine the five days between Palm Sunday and Good Friday – when Jesus’ fortunes took a 180-degree turn – from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, the apostle who turned him in to the authorities. It’s presented as a tale of political intrigue in which a peace-preaching rebel in the Roman-occupied Middle East is deemed too dangerous to the Judean government to live.

The production onstage at the Ordway is a revival of the 2016 staging by London’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre that went on to win the Olivier Award (London’s version of Broadway’s Tonys) for best revival of a musical, using the same concept, designs and choreography. Yet this isn’t a case of a touring production plopping down in a new town every week or two: This month at the Ordway is its first stop in preparation for an international tour that heads to Asia in the spring.

Director Timothy Sheader, choreographer Drew McOnie and designer Tom Scutt chose to lean into the “Superstar” element of the work by making mic stands ubiquitous onstage, the lead characters wielding them a la Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler or Queen’s Freddie Mercury. But what proves most compelling is the passion poured into those mics by Elvie Ellis’ Judas and Jack Hopewell’s Jesus, who’s equally adept at spine-tingling high-pitched wails and moving balladry. While the five-piece onstage band sometimes roars a little too loudly for the lyrics, it’s nevertheless a thrilling presentation enhanced immeasurably by recent improvements to the Ordway’s sound system, which envelops you in the thunder without pushing the volume into levels that require earplugs.

While Faith Jones’ Mary Magdalene has a lovely voice, she could bring more layers to this conflicted character. But it’s hard to compete with such scene stealers as Isaac Ryckeghem’s menacing basso-profundo Caiaphas, Kodiak Thompson’s malevolent Annas, Hosea Mundi’s stakes-setting Simon and Erich W. Schleck’s wildly flamboyant Herod.

Yet all 24 cast members deserve kudos for their skilled execution of this concept, their impassioned energy as luminescent as the forest of Christmas lights filling the park outside the Ordway.

‘Jesus Christ Superstar’

When: Through Dec. 28

Where: Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $165.50-$46.50, available at 651-224-4222 or ordway.org

Capsule: A thrilling staging that roars with passion.

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