IT is often said that town and gown, city and university, are indeed far away from each other, despite their proximity on the crow-flying map of York.

Never mind the gap, the arts continue to build bridges, be it university musicians playing at the Black Swan Folk Club and the National Centre For Early Music, or theatre groups, such as Out Of The Blue or Apollonysus Theatre presenting Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis at Trinity Hall this week.

Five years ago Mary Luckhurst and Mike Cordner, lecturers in modern drama, established BA and MA courses in writing and performance at the University of York.

As an adjunct to those studies, Mary set up Out Of The Blue theatre company, whose express role is to put into practice the courses' focus on analysing text and character.

For the first time, Out Of The Blue has ventured off campus and into York Theatre Royal in a chance for the student company to get its sea legs in a professional setting.

Given the company's remit, it is no surprise the play is not picked from theatre's fast-food counter, but the nouvelle cuisine of the Royal Court circuit.

Depending on whether you prefer Time Out to Nuts, Caryl Churchill's apocalyptic Far Away is experimental/weird, innovative/pretentious, modernist/dated.

What happens? A young girl with a teddy bear (Panda Cox, the name of the actress not the teddy) is disturbed by a scream. It is an owl, says her aunt (Sophie Larsmon). The truth is different: uncle is involved in human transportation. We are in the world of complicity and Bosnia/Iraq/the Holocaust, and soon we are in the world of hat-making and the exploitation of workers with Paul Birch's recalcitrant milliner, and onwards we go to the poisoning of wasps, evil crocodiles and wondering whose side the river is on. By the end, the dialogue has become elliptical and drowned by distorted sound.

"It's both naturalistic and surreal," says Mary Luckhurst. Or put another way, difficult, even baffling.

Hats off, however, to Cox, Larsmon and Birch, and the accompanying silent chorus, musicians and film maker Nik Morris, for their high artistic merit.

Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 10:10 Friday, February 11, 2005