BY ALL accounts, the National Theatre Shell Connections Youth Theatre Festival was a huge success.

Packed audiences and great productions written by professional writers made it a memorable four-day event, staged at Keswick's Theatre by the Lake and Kendal's Brewery Arts Centre.

At the heart of the festival, which featured 15 groups, was the Brewery's drama development officer Trish Gordon, who was thrilled at the standard achieved by the youth theatre and school and college drama groups from around the North West.

The two productions I saw were eye-openers as far as youth theatre was concerned.

First, St Bernard's School from Barrow performed Judith Johnson's The Willow Pattern, the tale of an ancient Chinese legend about a rich Mandarin and his cherished daughter Knoon-She.

Gentle, memorising, yet far from pedestrian, it's a love story and exquisitely told by St Bernard's.

Marie-Louise O'Connor was marvellous as Knoon-She.

Her heart lies with Chang (Chris Faulkner), her father's secretary and poet. And the dynamics between the two youngsters produced a magical performance.

As did Katie Wootton-Biggs as the sharp-tongued Min, Craig Mcllvogue as warrior Ta-Jin and Janine Kelly, his dominant mother.

Chloe Greenway and Charlotte Nicholson as doves showed their dancing skills.

And it was a strong show, too, from Jonathan Dawes playing Knoon-She's doting father, whose love for his daughter turns into blind rage as he learns of her liaison with Chang.

With his warriors, he pursues the lovebirds and in a dramatic climax kills them. Racked by guilt, he turns into a hermit.

Excellent performances all round from a talented cast and the voices of the chorus were a pleasure to hear, particularly in Tears for Fears' Mad World, which provided one of the many golden moments. Not forgetting narrator Katie Wadeson, whose seamless and confident performance drove the story perfectly.

From China to the Soviet Union and Queen Elizabeth School's zany comedy Bedbugs: The Musical penned by Snoo Wilson, with tunes by former Spandau Ballet guitarist Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt.

Awesome, pretty well sums up the whole show staged by the Kirkby Lonsdale school and some of the individual performances were frightening, they were so good, considering the age of the actors.

Especially Katherine Dale as the lady-in-red eccentric life-stylist Oleg Bard.

Bedbugs had impact from the outset as Chris Smith, booted up and brandishing a revolver as Russian poet and narrator Mayakovsky, burst on stage.

Dan Mason excelled as Ivan Varlet, a proletarian party member, who goes from a vodka-swilling mechanic to Ivor Violet and marries a beauty parlour manicurist (played by Leanne Westbury) in a self-improving effort to join the bourgeoisie.

But woe, the wedding runs into trouble as the house is set on fire and the fire brigade is too drunk to save the guests.

Ivan ends up in the flooded cellar and is frozen in a block of ice.

Fifty years on, he's thawed out and displayed as a specimen to the communist hordes of what humanity was like before the revolution.

From Carla Monvid-Jenkinson as Zoya to the manic (and clever) antics of the fire/police chief Ben France and his motley crew, it was great to watch.

A crazy but bold piece of theatre and brilliantly acted by all.

To be frank, both productions took youth theatre as such on to another level altogether, particularly the way the schools used their own musicians with great effect.