It is no surprise that first-division playwrights queue up to write for the annual Shell Connections season, a yearly event during which thousands of young people across the UK stage one of several plays specially commissioned by the National Theatre. The best plays and productions are showcased at the National in July, and in all the years I've been, I've never seen a really duff play or production.
This year is no exception. It is as if writing for young people frees the writers - removes the element of self-censorship, and the fear of being too direct and open. There is an honesty in writing and presentation that is both energising and touching.
On Wednesday night the plays on offer were Mark Ravenhill's Citizenship, performed by Glenthorne High School from Sutton, and Enda Walsh's Chatroom, staged with enormous aplomb by the Boomerang Theatre Company from Cork. In Ravenhill's winning comedy, a 15-year-old boy struggles to understand his sexuality. Chatroom, meanwhile, is a chilling and powerful tale of manipulation and bullying that takes place entirely in a teenage chatroom.
The thing I like about both plays is that they don't shirk the idea that growing up is a painful and difficult thing to do, and there are no cosy final walks into the sunset. They are both intensely alive to the possibilities and the pressures of being teenagers, and although the playwrights are very much older, you feel as if they are telling it from some place inside themselves that will forever be 15.
This allows the young actors to tap into the emotions and present them directly to the audience. What these young people's performances lack in technique, they more than make up for in honesty. They hide nothing.
The season is the best possible advertisement for theatre, young people and their teachers. Watching it, you feel the kids really are going to be OK.
· At the Cottesloe until Tuesday. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
