YORK Musical Theatre Company leading players Matthew Ainsworth and Toni Feetenby are finding Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects Of Love the most challenging show of their careers.

"I never had a Top A previously, so I worked at it solidly before the audition and squeezed it out that day and now the more I do it for the big song, Love Changes Everything, the easier it's getting," says 22-year-old Matthew, from Thirsk, who first joined the company last year to play Gerald in Me And My Girl and is now playing student Alex Dillingham, the role that made Michael Ball's name.

"I've always marketed myself as a tenor but there have been limitations until now, but because now I'm doing this role it's opening up a lot of my range, so now I can definitely call myself a tenor. I have to say it's the most exciting thing I've done vocally and the most demanding."

Toni is vastly more experienced than Matthew but playing the alluring actress Rose Vibert is testing her to the maximum. "With this show it's felt like starting from scratch as we've had to be prepared to make mistakes in front of each other and I'm not used to that, so you feel quite vulnerable," she says. "It's the hardest thing I have ever sung.

"I left one rehearsal in tears because I was so annoyed with myself but I had to accept it was a difficult show and after a few more rehearsals, it did start to click. All of a sudden I was really enjoying it because I felt I could actually do it at last as it all fell into place."

Toni is head of performing arts at Manor School in York and originally "wasn't even going to audition" for Rose, but the prospect of missing out on a Lloyd Webber show finally granted a release to the amateur circuit after 25 years changed everything.

"Being the department head is so manic, but when I heard the score of Aspects, the lure of Lloyd Webber was too much. The auditions were on the Monday after that, and I suddenly thought, sat at my desk, that I'd never get the chance again to do this role. Luckily, Richard Bainbridge [YMTC's chairman] texted me to say I wasn't too late," she says.

Toni has even had to forego a couple of wedding invitations during the production run. "I was supposed to be at a very good friend's wedding on the Friday and another on the Saturday as well and now I'll have to miss both of them. Such dedication!" she says.

Premiered in the West End in 1989, Aspects Of Love's story of passion, love and loss across three generations of a family is set on the cobbled streets of Paris, in the mountains of the Pyrenees and in Venice. At its centre is Matthew's Alex Dillingham, a young student travelling through France, who falls in love with Toni's Rose Vibert, but as the pair embark on a passionate affair, the unexpected arrival of Alex's uncle, George, changes their lives forever.

"The story spans17 years and Rose goes from 25 to 42, ending up with a 15-year-old daughter, Jenny," says Toni. "It's my first time that I've been a 'stage mum'. I've gone into the next stage of my stage career! 'There's no going back now', Richard [Bainbridge] said, but that's OK; he ends up as an 80-year-old in his role!

"I also have my first girl-on-girl kiss (with Jessa Liversedge, who's playing Giulietta). I marry George, and as George's best man, Giulietta claims her best man's prize of a snog with Rose."

Playing an "allluring actress" is not typecasting, stresses Toni. "Rose Vibert isn't a very good actress, she's not very successful and she has lots of affairs," she says. "That's how she gets on in life, having affairs with old men, young men, women and men aged in between. She doesn't want to be alone. She needs to be needed. She's clearly very alluring. I lose track of them all. I even say the wrong names."

Matthew is enjoying combining his "day job" managing the restaurant at the Black Bull in Thirsk's Market Place with his musical theatre commitments. "My connection with York Musical Theatre Company came about through Richard Bainbridge, who was my drama teacher at Thirsk School and Sixth Form College," he says. "I was also a member of the Northallerton Musical Theatre Company, which Richard directed, and when he he did the Titanic concert for YMTC, I came to the show and thought it would be good to join the company, especially as I can do shows for both companies as they're spaced out, with Northallerton doing theirs in October."

Matthew has played such roles as Freddy Eynsford-Hill in My Fair Lady, the Scarecrow in The Wizard Of Oz and Bill Sikes in Oliver! for the Northallerton company and now adds Alex Dillingham to his repertoire in York.

"I have to age from a naive young boy of 17 to 34 and I'm in between those ages at 22," he says as he contemplates taking on the role synonymous with Michael Ball. "It's good to observe how Michael played him, but you have to do it your own way or it's not worth it," he says.

They must do it the Lloyd Webber way too in a musical that is sung-through with almost no dialogue. "All the characterisation has to come through in the music and your singing," says Toni. "You could fall into the trap of just singing well but you have to perform it well too. Paul (director Paul Laidlaw) once said that 'when you're singing a song, don't think you're singing a song but that you're telling a story, so sing it that way'. That advice has stuck with me."

York Musical Theatre Company presents Aspects Of Love, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Monday to Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 and at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk