THERE is a world still going on beyond London 2012, G8 and Steven Gerrard.

You can step into another world, Philip Ridley's childhood canvas of Ruskin Splinter and a boy called Elvis, in Riding Lights Youth Theatre's world amateur premiere of Krindlekrax.

Krindlekrax may sound like a particularly unappetising German cheese biscuit, but is in fact the mysterious green creature that lurks, threatening as Jacques Chirac's scowl, beneath the dark bricks and cracked pavements of Lizard Street.

Dealing with Krindlekrax is a job fit only for heroes, and young Ruskin Splinter (Sam McAvoy) has put in his job application. He is a dreamer, a schemer, but truth is young Ruskin is puny, skinny as fashionable coffees and, in the tradition of geeky leads, he wears glasses. Whereas Elvis Cave (Tom Mackenzie) is tall, strong, mean, and a bully never parted from his basketball ball, unless it has just smashed another window.

With pictures of Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson on his bedroom wall, squeaky Ruskin harbours thespian aspirations , and for all the scepticism of his weary parents, the nonsense-spouting Wendy (Sarah Fox) and boozing Winston (Rab Cullen-Dent), he is determined to play the dragon-battling hero in the school play. Inevitably, bully boy Elvis is a nailed-on certainty for the role.

Ruskin won't cave in, however, and his spirit catches the attention of Mr Lace (Oliver Rowe), the drama teacher so excited at the very mention of Shakespeare's name that he folds up in a ball, and the ever caring school stalwart Corky Pigeon (Erin Burbridge/Anna Sheppard).

Issues of bullying, parental responsibility, youthful ambition, self-belief and death all come into play in a production staged with panache by Riding Lights' 11 to 14 age group. Under the direction of Paul Birch, Susanna Boyd and Joanita Musisi, the cast cracks on apace in this ensemble piece, where the staging is kept simple with a row of moveable doors in the first half and sheets of material (for hiding under) in a second half of hallucinations and dragon combat.

McAvoy is a stage natural, humorous and affecting; Mackenzie's Elvis gives a suitably big performance and Rowe's lisping mad professor act is a comic tour de force.

Krindlekrax, Riding Lights Youth Theatre, Friargate Theatre, York, 7.30pm. Box office: 0845 961 3000.

Updated: 10:55 Thursday, July 07, 2005