Blood + Chocolate, on York’s streets, until October 20, excluding Mondays. Tickets: Sold out.

THEATRE never stands still but the pace of change grows ever quicker, typified by the innovative work of Leeds company Slung Low and York multi-media pioneers Pilot Theatre. The term “anti-theatre” has been coined for Alan Lane’s Slung Low, but that is nonsense. Blood + Chocolate, their first collaboration with Pilot, is more a case of theatre + theatre + film; theatre + cordless headphones for the audience; and York’s historic streets + Anna Gooch’s brilliant design eye.

Yet it is still rooted in storytelling; in this case, epic open-air story-telling as Waggon Plays street theatre meets the spirit of Illuminating York.

Add Pilot’s pioneering Marcus Romer, the Starship Enterprise/Captain Kirk of York theatre; York Theatre Royal and producer Liam Evans-Ford’s know-how for the big event from last summer’s York Mystery Plays; and York’s playwright for all reasons, Mike Kenny, and Blood + Chocolate is born.

The play is so called because all York’s soldiers at the front at Christmas 1914 were issued with a tin of Rowntree’s chocolate at the Lord Mayor’s decree.

It begins with Slung Low’s yellow van pulling up, releasing a flare and instructing the 300-strong throng in Exhibition Square to don headphones. From hereon, you are as much in a movie experience as a theatrical one; the sound being mixed live by Matt Angove, feeding in Heather Fenoughty’s compositions, Craig Brown’s choral singers, sound effects and dialogue that can be delivered directly in front of you, or from a balcony, or at the very top of Clifford’s Tower.

The community cast of 180 – 60 per cent reassembled from the 2012 Mystery Plays – is also on earpieces, being given instructions by Lane, not heard by the audience. “Keep in character,” he apparently tells them as they rush through the streets. In other words, he is directing live, again a break with traditional theatre boundaries and more akin to a film set.

He and his cast are working with a support network of 600, ranging from costume makers to a brisk-moving lighting rig team and black-coated wardens, pointing to the next scene with torches or guiding you across a street alongside wide-winged angels as a bus is made to wait.

Aided by the “Chocolate Letters” from the city archives, Kenny tells of the young soldiers at the front in France; the women who took over their jobs at the chocolate factories; and the Quaker factory owners and conscientious objectors alike who must face up to their pacifist beliefs.

Forty actors have speaking roles, led by four professionals as the mood changes from zeal and optimism that the war will be over by Christmas, through the grind and horror of trench warfare; to its aftermath. North Yorkshireman Luke Adamson is soldier George, off to the front with brother Fred (Anthony Harrison); Lisa Howard is their Mother; Jo Mousley is Sarah, one of the girls working and waiting for news; and Richard Standing is the conscientious objector, The Conscience, the most haunting, troubling character.

After a video projection spanning the entire De Grey Rooms frontage, further setpieces ensue on the near three-hour journey: the open-windowed Mansion House doubles as the factory dispensing the tins and a 40ft truck for a battlefield tableau (the play’s Picasso/Guernica moment). Post-reviving hot chocolate and a choral requiem in All Saints, Pavement, the long third act follows at the Eye of York. Here a ghostly nurse ballet, choreographed by Lucy Hind with sheets, accompanies the Great War’s closing chapter and the shell-shocked post-mortem. On the one hand, Kenny includes a rendition of Wilfred Owen’s poem Futility; on the other, a “2013 Girl” (Imogen Rowley) reads out the Ode Of Remembrance, in eternal gratitude for the sacrifices of those who served.

Every upcoming performance has deservedly sold out for this landmark production in a city that constantly fights above its weight in creating bravura, breathtaking theatre that matters.

Charles Hutchinson