The short film that precedes each double-bill in the National Youth Theatre’s “Six-Pack” series – in which teenagers squeeze their spots, pump their biceps, vomit and hack away at their limbs with comedic grimaces to a soundtrack of thumping electronica – sets the tone for the plays that follow. All the typical ingredients of youth theatre are here: shock tactics, multimedia apparatus, hyperactive dancing and “issues”. But in spite of some awkward attempts at gaining street cred and a general lack of subtlety, these plays contain odd moments of revelation – which is, after all, what being a teenager is all about.

Each writer was assigned a pairing of body parts for their double-bill, and Michael Wynne didn’t stray far from his brief; his first play, Tits, is about a girl who doesn’t like her breasts; Teeth follows suit. It’s hard to feel anything but exasperation with Ffion (Gwyneth Keyworth), who is gradually harried by her boyfriend, a plastic surgeon, and, naturally, the media into wanting a breast enlargement.

In Teeth, Louise (Sophie Ward) spends hours in a bathroom, applying make-up and tapping at her incisors – all of which is about as entertaining as waiting for any teenage girl to get her act together – although things get a little interesting when it’s revealed that she suffers from the rare medical condition BDD or Imagined Ugliness Syndrome. “Raw talent” isn’t given a chance in these plays, as both protagonists seem to have been processed by the same retouching machine as Ffion’s photographs; they’re perfectly smooth, but exaggerated and lacking in depth and detail. ★★☆☆☆

Sarah Middleton and Jo Rayner in ‘Foot/Mouth’

Foot/Mouth, a double-bill written by John Nicholson and Steven Canny, is a more fantastical affair, set in the year 2025 in the independent Celtic state of Cornwall, where policeman come straight from Punch and Judy, liberal writers go missing and teenage girls wear tea dresses, wellies and stripy leggings. When eight detached feet are washed up on the Cornish shore, Sarah (Jo Rayner) sets out for England, which has become a totalitarian state “since the banking system collapsed 15 years ago and the whole free market system needed to be readdressed”. The play’s language is rich and inventive, but the writers’ inability to resist a joke (especially “lame” ones involving puns on feet) results in the play gradually dismembering itself and, by the grand finale, imaginative energy has been forsaken for jazz hands. ★★☆☆☆

Sarah Solemani is the youngest playwright of the three, but her script is by far the most successful because it deals with people rather than “issues”. The second play in her double-bill, Balls, about a Dublin stag-night, is a well-acted, funny and painful piece about sexual history and male competition, and gains enough momentum to deliver its heightened showdown in the Tobacco Drum strip-club.

Eyes is overly elliptical, but the opening scene lingers: Diana Peacock is being questioned about Picasso’s “Nude with Joined Hands” in an interview for a visual arts degree. She speaks hesitantly but with insight before correctly identifying the painting’s name and date. “What are your weaknesses?” asks an impressed young male professor. “I sleep with people I don’t fancy,” Diana blurts out, and then confesses that she has a baby waiting in a taxi outside. The professor offers her a place to stay in his bohemian household, but his influence turns out to be more damaging than inspirational – a perfect demonstration that the project of nurturing young people’s “raw talent” is never as simple as it sounds. ★★★☆☆

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