Jesus Christ Superstar has long been one of my favourite musicals. An early offering by the dream-team of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, I’m of the opinion that it was the pinnacle of their oeuvre.

The pair broke new ground by covering a sacred story in a modern way – The Passion set to a mind-blowing score heavy on metal, funk and even jazz.

Showing Jesus’s more human failings, giving Judas equal billing with the son of God, depicting Mary Magdalene as a quasi-love interest, was certainly irreverent - the BBC actually banned it as sacrilegious. Yet the original production was a box-office smash, producing several enduring numbers. Call it the Jerry Springer musical of its time, if you will.

Last week, the 50th anniversary tour checked in at the Hall For Cornwall. The question is, would it sound as fresh half a century on, in a world that is in many ways very different to the one it was written in?

The answer, I’m glad to say, was a definitive yes. The production was loud and bold, with top-notch rock musicians hidden amongst the industrial set.

With his baseball hat, T-shirt and acoustic guitar, the effect was very much to imagine what Christ might have looked like had he lived today, while the visceral ensemble choreography created a mob energy that was oppressive, often threatening – as imaginable in current times as it would have been two millennia ago.

The main cast were superb. Ian McIntosh as Jesus and Shem Omari James as Judas matched each other song for song, their energy lending emotional depth to each number. Stand-out moments included Jesus lamenting in the garden of Gethsemane, while the use of silver paint to represent Judas’ “bloody money” was genius.

A magnificently evil set of Pharisees delivered acidly comical numbers, with Jad Habchi’s bass Caiaphas contrasting brilliantly with Matt Bateman’s stratospheric tenor Annas. Hats off to Timo Tatzber’s Herod, too, whose Charleston-style cameo was a velvet glove concealing an iron fist.

Hannah Richardson as Mary Magdalen was simply luminous, while Ryan O’Donnell gave a pitch-perfect portrait of Pontius Pilate as a conflicted man, every bit a “innocent puppet” as Christ himself. His final, frustrated condemnation of Christ, and the subsequent segue into the musical’s most famous number, took my breath away.

That said, I found the title track – the one everyone is guaranteed to know - an anti-climax. Was it down to familiarity, or because we’d heard an embarrassment of riches leading up to it?

No matter. The entire audience rose as one when the lights went down. A triumph. I would have been happy to go back again, and again. I’ve been singing the songs ever since, and have even picked up my illustrated children’s bible (a charity bookshop find, nostalgically purchased because I had the self-same one as a kid), and started reading the stories all over again.

I was accompanied by Other Half and Daughter. Like me, OH had seen it as a teenager, and knew what to expect. What the 21st century teen would make of it, her awareness limited to the title song bastardised by generations of schoolchildren to reflect Christ wearing women’s underwear, was anyone’s guess.

It’s impossible to guarantee whether Daughter will like a theatrical show. Six: a massive hit. Romeo and Juliet: not so much. The more expensive the ticket, the less impressed she is likely to be.

So I did my best to prepare her without spoilers. When it comes to Christ’s last week before Easter, the crucifixion isn’t exactly the world’s best-kept secret; but (close your eyes if you don’t want to know) Judas also meets a sticky end and the 39 lashes are counted out one by one.

Within minutes of curtain up, I sensed her scowling. The problem: it was all a bit too “religious”. I wondered what part of a) the title and b) my synopsis had failed to give that away.

And it’s hardly an evangelical gathering. I argued that, while obviously many people do have a Christian faith which should be respected, those of us who don’t can still find plenty to think about and learn from a story like this.

Consider the moral and ethical questions around power, populism and capital punishment. At what point does fandom morph into hysteria? When does a leader or celebrity have the right to draw the line around their personal space? “Think of it as a Shakespearean tragedy,” I suggested, and was promptly accused of disrespecting the Bard.

That said, she did enjoy the music, and I swear the next time anyone gets in my space - barges in on me when I’m on the toilet, for example - I shall scream: “GET OUUUUUUUUT!” in the same sky-high, Spinal Tap note that Jesus hit when chucking the traders out of the temple.