There couldn’t be a more appropriate time to bring out a play featuring young people struggling in the immigration system, with Brexit weighing so heavily on everyone’s minds.

But it is a happy coincidence that 10,000 Smarties is being staged now, rather than something more considered - the result of a year-long project to highlight the issues being faced by many youngsters in Oxfordshire and their experiences of the immigration system.

Conducting lengthy research in detention centres including Campsfield in Kidlington, schools and charity outreach projects, the Oxford Festival Of The Arts commissioned director Alice Malin to stage a play on the controversial subject, enrolling ‘trail blazer’ Josh Azouz to write it.

In Campsfield they met a young Iraqi man caught up in the bureaucracy and red tape, a system made doubly difficult for those with little grasp of the language, legalities, or adequate representation. They also went to Taylor House in London and watched people undergoing deportation orders.

This all culminates in Josh’s “surreal” Orwellian script where the State is represented by a stubborn and immoveable child, and the two main characters' relationship is torn apart as one of them is deported.

“It is basically our immigration system seen through the eyes of a child,” Alice explains.

So why did Magdalen College School, which is running the festival, commission the piece? “Firstly because they are trying to forge links with the rest of the city and wanted to tackle the issues being experienced by young people in Oxford, and to bring the debate out into the open, for which I take my hat off to them."

As for the future of 10,000 Smarties, its world premiere is tonight at the OFS. Alice then hopes to take the play on tour around the country.

So what can we expect? "A real eye opener. I hope audiences also come away with an appreciation of an important story told in a slightly unusual way,” she concludes.

10,000 Smarties opens at Oxford's Old Fire Station tonight and runs until July 2. www.artsfestivaloxford.org