TUTTI Frutti, the Leeds children's theatre company, already have explored the subject of Alzheimer's disease with the under sevens in Brendan Murray's play Monday's Child.

Now they are making sense of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, "raising public awareness about the reality" of living with ADHD in their first touring production for eight year olds and upwards.

Children's theatre doesn't mean child's play, and it is not everyday a programme will have an introduction by a professor of psychological intervention and behaviour change: Prof David Daley, from the University of Nottingham, with whom Tutti Frutti worked during their research.

"Theatre is an excellent vehicle for getting our message out to the community and helping other children understand the condition," he writes of a "controversial disorder that is often misunderstood, assumed to be just the result of bad parenting".

He hopes that through WiLd!, audiences will begin to see life from the point of view of a young boy with the disorder, instead of merely perceiving the child's behaviour as odd, disruptive, wilful, naughty and annoying.

Playwright Evan Placey serves that cause by presenting the 60-minute WiLd! solely through the eyes and unrestrained storytelling of Billy (Rhys Warrington), a boy on the cusp of his 11th birthday. His way of dealing with his father's absence and his life with his newly single mum is to throw everything into his hobby of beekeeping, which provides the motif for Kate Bunce's honeycomb and beehive set design.York Press:

Ain't misbehavin': Rhys Warrington as Billy in WiLd!

Billy is one of the one in ten schoolchildren who has ADHD, and his condition expresses itself in impulsive outbursts and sudden verbal tremors that do not disturb him, but do trouble those (not seen) around him. Percussionist Molly Lopresti, performing compositions by Dominic Sales at the corner of the stage, provides the equivalent of a Greek chorus commentary to Billy's actions.

By channelling everything through the very impressive Warrington's agile, gymnastic, boundlessly energetic and articulate Billy, Placey's central character strikes up a bond with the audience, not only emotionally but with humour and intellect too in Wendy Harris's highly imaginative production, which has as much bounce as Billy's trampoline.

Ideas buzzing restlessly around his head, Billy makes the world look at itself anew in his monologue, like an artist does on canvas. Is he the one behaving strangely or, as he sees it, is it those around him as he plays his troubled parents, his friends and ex-friends, his frustrated primary school teachers and his doctors?

Thanks to the triumvirate of Placey, Harris and Warrington, you will leave WiLD! feeling children's theatre is a powerful medium for greater understanding and tolerance, for children and adults alike.

WiLd!, Tutti Frutti, on tour at The Studio, York Theatre Royal, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk