The Ogunquit Playhouse closes its 2012 season on a high note with “The Buddy Holly Story.”

In retrospect, it’s remarkable to think a recording career that lasted just 18 months could have such a profound and lasting impact on the trajectory of popular music. Buddy Holly was just 22 when he died in a plane crash alongside teenage star Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson in 1959. But by then he had already sealed his immortality as an immeasurably influential pioneer of early rock ’n’ roll.

The Ogunquit Playhouse began its 2012 season with a production about another American music legend who died young in “Always, Patsy Cline.” The theater is wrapping up the season with “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story,” onstage through Oct. 21.

Part rock concert, part variety show, and part biographical tribute, the musical is, above all else, first-rate entertainment. All the cast members, including Kurt Jenkins as Holly, sing and play their own instruments live onstage, creating an authentic music experience. They perform close to 20 Holly classics, as well as other popular hits from the 1950s.

Directed by DJ Salisbury, the show begins with Holly as a 19-year-old start-up trying to escape the oppressively dominant country scene in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas. Holly and his band, The Crickets, are castigated for playing “colored music” in a town where anything other than old-fashioned country is considered sacrilege.

That problem continues to plague the band after they land their first recording contract with Decca Records in 1956. The label wants country, but Holly refuses to compromise his rock sound, which, as he repeatedly insists, is what all the kids want to hear.

Their fortunes change when they hire more open-minded manager Norm Petty (Luke Darnell) and release their hit single, “That’ll Be the Day,” which turns them into overnight stars. By the time he turns 21, Holly is one of the biggest rock icons in the world.

The show follows Holly on his journey from Lubbock to recording studios in Tennessee and New Mexico to the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, and finally to his last concert at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on Feb. 2, 1959, memorialized by Don McLean as “the day the music died.”

Part of what made Holly such a prolific hit-maker was his dogged ambition and his insistence on doing things his own way. That quality is illustrated when Petty asks Holly to take off his glasses during live shows—a suggestion that provokes a surprisingly adamant rebuttal. He defies another societal stricture by marrying his Latin love, Maria Elena (Nikki Arnone).

What makes the show such a pleasure to watch is the talent of the performers onstage. Jenkins, who looks not unlike a young John Lennon but passes here for Holly, offers a magnetic portrayal of the young star, singing and strumming his electric guitar with gusto. It makes one curious to hear Jenkins’ real-life alternative rock band, Skyward Spirits.

The other two Crickets are equally charismatic. Bassist Joe B. Maudlin (Sam Weber) dances with, around and upon his upright bass as he plays, stealing the spotlight with many an instrumental stunt. Drummer Jerry Allison (Joe Cosmo Cogen) is a walking percussion instrument who taps a beat on nearly everything he encounters.

Another commanding performance comes from Trista Dollison, whose vocal theatrics on her rendition of “Shout” earn some of the show’s most enthusiastic applause. The second act is largely an ongoing concert at the Surf Ballroom, where The Big Bopper (Jayson Elliott) exuberantly performs his hit “Chantilly Lace,” Ritchie Valens (Ryan Jagru) offers a pelvic-thrusting performance of “La Bamba,” and the two join Holly in his blue suede suit for a festive execution of the Chuck Berry classic “Johnny B Goode.”

The production mostly keeps things light, celebrating Holly’s life and music instead of mourning the singular tragedy of his death. Although some gasps permeate the audience when it’s announced that Ritchie Valens was just 17 at the time of the crash, the show does not linger on the melancholy, instead returning promptly to rock ’n’ roll.

For those of us born after 1959, this is the closest we’ll ever get to seeing the great Buddy Holly in concert. The show serves as one more exultant encore more than 50 years after the musician’s untimely death, proving his music will never fade away.