YOUTH theatre shows can be educational for performers and audience alike.

Those on stage learn the value of community and camaraderie, those watching learn that York Youth Theatre's young participants are being stretched by plays with adult themes.

Bryony Lavery's More Light and Carol Ann Duffy and Tim Supple's adaptation of The Brothers Grimm's Grimm Tales are linked not only by macabre happenings but bonds of friendship and a will to survive in extremis.

Both productions are given over to YTY's 14-to-16 age group, and the first into the light is More Light, performed in virginal white Japanese robes by Project 9.

"This is without doubt a challenging play for young people", says director Jill Adamson, the theatre's director of education. She's not joking, because all manner of aspects of sexuality pop up: courtesans, castration, even oral sex.

Castration looms large too, but relax because Adamson's young company has not bitten off more than it can chew.

The cast handles serious issues with serious intent, peppered with occasional bolts of ribald humour, and the ensemble playing of the entombed Emperor's concubines, munching their way through his dead body on Catherine Chapman's triple-level set, is lucidly choreographed.

Rebecca Zienko, in the title role of More Light, and Jacob Ward's convict pack plenty of conviction too.

Ivan Stott's music follows up a star turn in More Light with another omnipresent contribution to a trio of stories in Grimm Tales.

Education associate Stephen Burke's cast from Project 9.5 is exuberant more than precise, dressed more casually too, but there is liveliness in abundance, especially in Snow White, where the Action Dwarf puppetry is a particular joy.

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Updated: 11:18 Friday, May 06, 2005