IF YOU enjoy Pilot Theatre’s work for young audiences in York and beyond, seek out this West Yorkshire Playhouse premiere of Benjamin Zephaniah’s story of an African boy’s arrival in grey Britain.

Zephaniah’s 2001 novel has been adapted for the stage by Lemn Sissay, a poet and playwright who shares the protagonist’s Ethiopian-Eritrean roots and passage through Britain’s social services, giving him the inside track on the boy’s experiences.

The play is billed as being suitable for ten year olds and upwards and is directed by the Playhouse’s associate director for young people’s theatre, Gail McIntyre, and although it played to an adult house at Wednesday night’s press night, it has a young audience at its heart.

One reviewer elsewhere has suggested Refugee Boy “sometimes borders on the twee”, and certainly Sissay’s adaptation is not as dark or as angry as it could be, but that darkness is still implied; guns, knives, terror and murder still play their part.

This is definitely not a refugee variation on The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, although humour and innocence are both to the fore as is a sweetness of tone.

The boy of the title is teenager Alem, a refugee from the Ethiopia-Eritrea border civil war, left by his father at a Berkshire B&B with a note explaining his reasons for leaving him to fend for himself and in turn find himself.

Alem, played so winningly by Fisayo Akinade, must undergo a steep but quick learning curve, picking up the language, experiencing snow for the first time (Sissay’s most magical scene), and having his naivety and innocence buffeted by what he encounters in the care of the social services and the Refugee Council.

His growing-up is shaped by three relationships in particular: the cheeky, car-loving Mustapha (Dwayne Scantlebury), who looks out for him; the hard-nut yet ultimately protective Sweeney (Dominic Gately), who is not to be messed with; and the vivacious Ruth, with whom friendship blossoms from initial antipathy when looked after by an Irish couple, Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald (Gately and Becky Hindley).

All the while, the back story in Africa is played out, interwoven with the English story on an imaginative set design by Emma Williams that conveys the heat and war of one continent and yet the drabness of over here.

Suitcases form rickety staircases and characters scurry here and there, sometimes carrying off props with them before the next scene to maintain the rapid pace of an 80-minte production with no interval.

As is the fashion (witness Doctor Faustus next door in the Quarry Theatre), the actors never leave the stage, sitting at the side when not in a scene.

This is surely not what Prime Minister Cameron and Chancellor Osborne meant by their mantra of “We’re all in this together”, but it is becoming standard practice in “breaking down the fourth wall”, and it does make the “magic” of creating theatre more tangible and inclusive.

More street than poetic, and personal yet universal, Refugee Boy is well told by impassioned writer, imaginative director and impressive cast alike.

Refugee Boy, Courtyard Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until March 30. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk