JONATHAN Harvey is responsible for Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, that frantic and camp BBC 2 sitcom with a ginger-frizzed Kathy Burke. Don't let that put you off Beautiful Thing, the cream of Harvey's play-writing, now being given a tenth anniversary revival in a co-production by York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre Company.

Winner of the 1994 John Whiting Award, Beautiful Thing was made into a film a year later by Hettie Macdonald, and it returns to the stage in a slightly updated version - new David Beckham gay icon reference and all - but still with the same sunshine disposition.

Despite its gritty urban setting of the Thamesmead in South East London, the urban fairytale of Beautiful Thing occupies the sunny side of the street, where teenagers Ste, Jamie and Leah live next door to each other.

As title credits pass across the floor in the manner of the start to a Star Wars movie, Marcus Romer's production opens to Mama Cass singing It's Getting Better, and indeed circumstances can only improve over a long heatwave of a summer.

Ste (Chad Gomez) is the victim of his father's drunken beatings; Jamie (Rachid Sabitri), 15, is more interested in Cagney And Lacey and Hello gossip than football, and has issues with his bar-working, leopardskin-dressing mother, Sandra (Andrina Carroll) and her stream of unsuitable, younger men. Latest in the line is Tony (Marcello Walton), an "artist" who may be taking the michelangelo.

Ste has no mother figure in his life, Jamie no father figure; mouthy, bolshy, mother-hating neighbour, Leah (Rhea Bailey) has only the Mamas And Papas, and more particularly her heroine, the late Mama Cass, whose flower-power Californian music punctuates the production at regular intervals.

While Leah and Sandra spar, and Tony drifts around, shirt undone, Ste and Jamie develop a loving bond in a summer romance, reticent yet ultimately happy first steps into the love that dare not speak its name.

Harvey handles their journey in fairytale fashion, with light emerging from darkness, but what separates Beautiful Thing from the kitchen-sink domestic dramas of the black-and-white early Sixties is the humour. Camp and only occasionally cruel, it softens the sting of the social drama in a tale of coming of age and finding your place in the world.

Yet the playing of Andrina Carroll, in particular, brings out the pathos, never more so than when Sandra confronts Jamie about his sexuality. The tenderness that replaces the initial anger is moving indeed.

Updated: 15:12 Thursday, June 12, 2003