Jack Hobbs, aka Hobbit, is a beatboxer. A really good one. He can make it seem as if a box contains laughter. Ryan Hartson, aka LoGisTic, is a dancer, Mohsen Nouri a puppeteer and Elisha Howe, aka Elektric, is a singer and poet. They are not quite sure what it is that they’ve made, in this 75-minute show drawing on stories and contributions gathered from young people. They say that they think it’s part gig and part theatre, part movement and part puppetry, but it really doesn’t matter what you call it, because their individual talents and the show’s originality and freshness sings out.

Made with Sue Buckmaster of Theatre-Rites and Keith Saha of 20 Stories High, the show quite literally opens the box on the daily lives of young people and the pressures they face. The young cast keep pulling cardboard boxes out of the wall behind them and finding stories inside. There’s Omar – created by the simple manipulation of a hooded sweatshirt – who doesn’t want to engage or talk, but who eventually finds his voice. There’s Jack in the box, who becomes a reluctant father. Joanne is the abused paper girl, who cuts herself into shreds.

The piece is relentlessly downbeat, with little sign that there’s much positive about being a teenager today. Towards the end it gets a little earnest with the message that you can be broke and beat without being broken or beaten. But never mind, because the quartet of performers are personable, their talent obvious and this theatrical mash-up has a low-key, lo-fi inventiveness that occasionally verges on the brilliant. That’s particularly true of an early scene, in which life on the Cherry Bank Estate is evoked using a few boxes, some drawings and a projector. It’s a miniature world of modern Rapunzels, locked in their high-rise boxes, who can’t see a way to make an escape.

• At Theatre Royal, Margate, Friday. Box office: 01843-292 795. Lawrence Batley theatre, Huddersfield, Monday. Box office: 01484-430 528. Then on tour to 2 April.