BORN in Zimbabwe, and raised in both Leeds and Zim before settling in West Yorkshire, Zodwa Nyoni is a performance poet and blossoming playwright who has graduated to her first full-scale play .

Boi Boi Is Dead follows her own path in referencing both Africa and Britain, although director Lucian Msamati avoids specific locations. Britain is mentioned, rather than seen, and Africa is evoked by burnished orange skylines, rows of lit houses and buildings in miniature and cut-out silhouettes of domestic objects that fly above the cast's heads in Francisco Rodriguez-Weil's set design.

This imposes a bolder theatrical vision beyond the soap-opera boundaries of Nyoni's story of a dysfunctional family at war over the legacy of Boi Boi, who is indeed dead but present throughout, as all the cast is. Boi Boi (played handsomely by Jack Benjamin) was a jazz trumpeter with Hugh Masekela's gifts and a guilt-free mess of a life that combined the familiar traits of addiction, too many women and not enough commitment to being a father.

Benjamin's trumpet playing of Michael Henry's score speaks more eloquently than Boi Boi's role as a narrator observing the consequences of his past when troublesome former wife Stella (Lynette Clarke), a backing singer with a lot of front, turns up to battle with his ever loyal mistress, Miriam (Angela Wynter). Caught up in the funeral crossfire are wheeler-dealer Petu (Joseph Aselakun), Miriam's son, and Una (Debbie Korley), Stella's daughter, brought up in her absence by Miriam but now being taken off to England at the insistence of Boi Boi's stern, strict brother Ezra (Andrew French).

Nyoni reveals a talent for punchy humour, pathos and telling home truths, and while her inexperience is apparent, Msamati over-compensates by smothering the domestic drama in too much directorial dressing.

• Boi Boi Is Dead, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until March 7. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk