Beautiful Thing, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until June 28

FOR Rhea Bailey, it was the part she thought had slipped beyond her grasp; for Rachid Sabitri, it was the play he craved doing even in the face of a West End offer.

Their fairytale happy endings come this week, when they open in Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing - aptly an urban fairytale itself - in The Studio at York Theatre Royal.

Rhea, 19, from Leeds, first had the chance last summer to star in Harvey's warm-hearted tale of love, friendship and coming of age over a long hot summer on a South East London council estate.

"I got cast for the role of Leah at the Oldham Coliseum but it clashed with You Get Me, a show I was doing for the BBC about teenagers setting up a pirate radio show," she recalls.

"I thought it was going to be sod's law, and I would have to miss out but then luckily the chance came up to do it in York."

So, two directors have considered Rhea ideal to play troublesome, not-so-sweet sixteen Leah.

"I know! It's quite worrying, being the role that it is. I dread to think of what it says about me. Leah is very loud, very mouthy, a typical bolshie teenager: she got kicked out of school and no one has the time of day for her."

How does that compare with her own school days?

"Oh, I was good at school - though I didn't go as often as I should have," says Rhea. "I missed a lot of school because of my acting but I always caught up with the work, even if I didn't really like school."

Rhea's love of theatre and performing was nurtured in school productions, cabaret and amateur shows and she sang in a choir too. She attended the Scala after-school drama club in Leeds; dipped her toe into soap opera in six months as an extra in Emmerdale; and studied at the Intake Performing Arts College, Leeds, in 2001-2001, landing a contract in Crossroards while there.

"I played Chloe for a year when I was finishing the second year of my BTEC diploma in performing, but I still managed to get a distinction," Rhea says.

Crossroads was a good experience, too: "Chloe ran a caf and was best friends with the hotel manager's daughter, and they were just getting up to mischief in the hotel, so I had good fun running around a hotel for a year!"

Where Rhea's path to professional stage and screen has seemed inevitable from her earliest performing days, Rachid initially had other aspirations.

"I was never into drama at school. I thought it was for pansies. I was into football," says the 21 year old, who was born in Orpington, Kent, of Moroccan parents.

At 15, a crush on a fellow pupil called Kerry had led him to audition for an improvised production at his secondary school, only because she was involved in the show too. However, he found himself playing a leading role, courtesy of a broken leg putting paid to another actor's participation.

What's more, he ended up hating the girl but loving theatre.

Rachid went on to study at the Guildford School of Acting, finishing his three-year course last year and heading straight for the West End, albeit via five or six auditions for Romeo And Juliet The Musical.

He read repeatedly for Romeo but landed the volatile, quick-witted Mercutio, cast opposite The Cruise star Jane McDonald in the role of the long-suffering Nurse. It is said the audience had to be even more long suffering: the show was panned by the press and closed after only four months.

"But it did have a cult following because it was so bad that it had a kind of camp aura about - and it was good fun to do. I did enjoy it."

Better still, his appearance in Romeo And Juliet The Musical appears to be catching the eye of the movers and shakers in his profession. Not least Jonathan Harvey, writer not only of Beautiful Thing but the Kathy Burke sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme too.

"I met Jonathan in late February with a view to doing a new sitcom, but nothing came of it. I'd actually seen Beautiful Thing in 1995 but I'd completely forgotten he'd written it, so when I went to his audition I'd no idea who he was. My agent said it was probably better that I didn't as I would have been in awe of him."

In passing, in that conversation, Rachid mentioned that Beautiful Thing was one of his favourite plays. Two days later came news that York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre Company were to stage a co-production.

"I set about reading it and learning as much as I could about the characters, and though I don't know if I read well at the audition, I did get the call a couple of days later," he says.

However, Rachid faced a dilemma. He had to choose between making his first foray into a northern theatre to play 15-year-old Jamie in Beautiful Thing or joining the carnival of West End colour otherwise known as Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams.

"That was tempting but it was going to be one of those 12-month roles with all that rehearsing and waiting around taking it up to 15 months, and 15 months in one role is too long," he says.

So, instead he is in York, revelling in his own dream of a role.

Beautiful Thing, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until June 28. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 10:13 Friday, June 06, 2003