I went into this play ‘blind’ – there were, as others in the press night audience helpfully pointed out, six novels and three novellas in the Noughts & Crosses series written by Malorie Blackman. There’s also a drama series based on the novels, still available at the time of writing on BBC iPlayer – six episodes are almost an hour long and four more are fifty minutes long. This play is based on the first novel only, although this is 449 pages long, so there’s still a fair amount of ground to cover in an evening.
The marketing for this production likens it to Romeo & Juliet: the analogy doesn’t quite work for me. There were “two households” but they were not “alike in dignity”. The world portrayed by the play is one of apartheid. The ‘Noughts’, so to speak, are the ‘whites’ and the ‘Crosses’ are the ‘coloureds’ – except here, the Crosses are the ones with the wealth, the power, the authority, the land, and so on. The Noughts are zeroes, nobodies – noughts. It’s an intriguing take on an alternative society, which brings Animal Farm to mind, as the inequalities remain and by the end, things seem worse than they were at the beginning.
A Cross, Persephone ‘Sephy’ Hadley (Corinna Brown), lives with her parents, Kamal (Habib Nasib Nader), deputy prime minister, and Jasmine (Amanda Bright), a socialite who does nothing but drink excessively and gossip with her friends but still manages to make more of a net positive contribution to society than her politician husband. (How much of an alternative universe is this to modern Britain?) Jasmine used to employ Meggie McGregor (Kate Kordel) as a nanny for Sephy and her older sister, Minerva (Jessica Layde), and Meggie’s younger son, Callum (Noah Valentine), used to play with Sephy when they were very little. Or to put it another way, when they first became friends, Sephy didn’t know Callum was a Nought and Callum didn’t know Sephy was a Cross.
The twist in the story comes when Heathcroft, a public school for Crosses, decides to accept a small number of Noughts as pupils. Amongst them is Callum McGregor. It’s not clear why this happened, given the extremely deep hatred the Crosses have for the Noughts, and vice versa – after all, doesn’t the upper caste think the lower caste is, by definition, intellectually challenged? Why educate people who are never going to be given opportunities in later life to use their acquired knowledge? Or is the world in the play ever so slightly less draconian than I assumed it to be? (Given what transpires later, no.)
I was somewhat triggered by the school bullies in the show – I suppose very few portrayals of school life are altogether, if at all, positive. All they see is Sephy hanging out with Callum, and how dare a Cross even speak to a Nought, let alone befriend one! This wasn’t the first time on this stage that a character was about to be hanged only for there to be a last-minute reprieve – the same thing happened in a production of The Beggar’s Opera in 2011. Elsewhere, a subplot about Callum’s sister Lynette (Chanel Waddock) is worthy of a separate play in its own right.
The production values are high – while some people might be talking unfeasibly loud in a private residence, being able to hear every word clearly completely obliterates that anomaly. The cast are very convincing in their roles. Whether they were planning direct action against the establishment, or delivering a letter, there was a sense of urgency throughout the play. Noughts & Crosses has much to say about tensions in the community, inequalities in society, political inertia, and terrorism in the modern world, amongst other things. A thoughtful, gripping and unsettling production, it’s worth seeing.
Review by Chris Omaweng
‘All our lives criss-crossing but never really touching. A world full of strangers living with all that fear.’
Widely considered to be one of the 21st century’s greatest novels, Malorie Blackman’s best-selling Noughts & Crosses, a bittersweet love story with echoes of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, is revived for the London stage in this brand-new production.
By a secluded beach Callum and Sephy meet in secret; life-long friends living on separate sides of a divided world. When Callum, from a Nought family, is accepted to Sephy’s prestigious Cross school, will it bring them closer, or will the hate and fear that surrounds them drive them apart?
CAST
Alec Boaden (Jude)
Amanda Bright (Jasmine)
Corinna Brown (Sephy)
Halle Brown (Lola & Juno)
Michael Cusick (Mr Stanhope & Peter)
Elle Davies (Shania & Leila)
Eddie Elliott (Mr Corsa & Collins & Jack)
Emma Jane Goodwin (Sarah Pike)
Kate Kordel (Meggie)
Jessica Layde (Minerva)
Wela Mbusi (Mr Pingule & Governor)
Habib Nasib Nader (Kamal)
Yolanda Ovide (Dionne & Clerk)
Helena Pipe (Reporter & Kelanie & Joannie)
Richard Riddell (Ryan)
Ben Skym (Colin & Morgan)
Noah Valentine (Callum)
Chanel Waddock (Lynette)
CREATIVES
Based on the novel by Malorie Blackman
Adapted by Dominic Cooke
Directed by Tinuke Craig
RC Annie (Fight Directors)
Phillippe Cato (Associate Director)
Hazel Holder (Voice Coach)
Ingrid Mackinnon (Movement & Intimacy Director)
Max Pappenheim (Sound Designer)
Joshua Pharo (Lighting Designer)
Colin Richmond (Set & Costume Designer)
Jacob Sparrow (Casting Director)
DJ Walde (Composer)
NOUGHTS & CROSSES
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
28 June to 26 July 2025
