'Noughts & Crosses' review — this moving and powerful production depicts star-crossed love in a racially segregated world

Read our review of Noughts & Crosses, adapted from Malorie Blackman's novel, now in performances at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre to 26 July.

The crosses rule over the noughts with total impunity in Malorie Blackman’s seminal 2001 novel that allegorically flips the well-greased mechanics of racial segregation to imagine a world where Black people are forcefully and cruelly in charge of their white neighbours. The unfairness of such two-tier apartheid systems is screamed loudly and sears pertinently in this crystalline production directed by the theatre’s new associate artistic director Tinuke Craig, which uses Dominic Cooke’s existing adaptation of the story.

It’s an action-packed take, with swift storytelling neatly compressing the plot into a little over two hours. Under Ingrid Mackinnon’s deft movement direction, scenes shift seamlessly from a private beach to the school dinner hall or the homes of its characters, with an ensemble cast fleshing out each moment in a production that relies on little by way of set pieces or props.

Fuelling it are a pair of passion-charged central performances. Corinna Brown plays the spunky cross Sephy Hadley, whose easy, comfortable confidence could only come from being born into privilege. Opposite her, Noah Valentine – in an impressive professional stage debut – is the downtrodden nought Callum McGregor, outwardly awkward but with a blaze in his belly. Together, they’re the story’s Romeo and Juliet-inspired star-crossed lovers, who meet as children and refuse to give one another up, despite belonging to a society determined to drive them apart.

Callum is one of three noughts to earn a place at Sephy’s prestigious school, but once inside is treated as second class. And when Callum’s family is linked to a terrorist attack at the local shopping centre, Sephy, whose father is the Deputy Prime Minister, is sent away to boarding school, while Callum remains home and becomes radicalised. The two never stop orbiting one another though, and in one delicately narrated scene of Craig’s production, they eventually consummate their relationship.

There are passages of Cooke’s text that are purely expositional. Years are galloped over in brief sentences, while some of the dialogue has a functional, simplistic quality, though this could be for the benefit of the story’s YA demographic. Ideas upturning real racial discrimination are cleverly introduced, from a white character complaining that plasters are only designed to match darker skin tones, to a terrible slur, ‘blanker’, used by the crosses to insult the noughts. And there’s straight-out-of-2025 talk of diversity initiatives crumbling before they’ve even got off the ground.

On Colin Richmond’s set – an unforgiving maze of rusted ladders, separated floors and closed doors that encapsulates a world where social advancement is impossible for noughts – we see Black and white communities stand separate. And class is importantly brought into this dynamic too: the McGregor family, like all noughts, are working class, while the Hadleys are middle class and then some.

The Open Air Theatre, where daylight gradually fades above the stage, is a fitting setting for a story that gets steadily darker and bleaker as it progresses. Though there is a glimmer of hope with the arrival of a mixed-race baby, Blackman’s story remains unflinching in its message that societies running on racial injustice will never be at peace. This moving and powerful production is a welcome political addition to the summer's bill.

Noughts & Crosses is at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre to 26 July. Book Noughts & Crosses tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: Noughts & Crosses (Photos by Manuel Harlan)