Noughts and Crosses, Malorie Blackman’s bestselling 2001 Young Adult novel, kicked off a series with a sharp yet straightforward conceit - a world where white people - or ‘Noughts’ - were enslaved and later, treated as second-class citizens by a powerful Black population, ‘Crosses’. Throwing a star-crossed love story into the mix, she created a hugely compelling exploration of racism, rebellion and hope, that’s now widely read in schools. Now, it’s also a successful stage play, which I went to see this Tuesday - it’s at the Playhouse until Saturday night - amongst an audience of several school groups.
Our heroes are Sephy Hadley (Effie Ansah), a Cross whose father is an influential politician, and Callum McGregor (James Arden), a Nought whose mother worked for the Hadleys for most of Callum’s childhood. As a result, Callum and Sephy are lifelong friends, even after their parents fall out. When the studious Callum wins a scholarship place at Sephy’s posh Cross school, however, they are forced to confront painful truths about the bigotry surrounding them.
Noughts and Crosses is a sincere and faithful adaption, that somewhat tediously maintains the pacing of a novel, rather than a stage play. The first half feels plodding at times, and there is a lack of autonomy for the main characters, who by nature of their age are merely side characters in the political tensions and ensuing uprising surrounding them. As it is, I personally feel the adaptation didn’t quite capture the stakes of the revolution it portrays.
There is also a fair amount of exposition that the characters deliver directly to the audience, at times in rhyming, spoken-word monologues. This has the flattening, distancing effect of a voiceover in a film. Getting all the necessary information into scenes may have required trimming the plot and diverging from just Callum and Sephy’s perspectives, but that doesn’t sound like a crime.
Callum and Sephy’s love story, while sweetly portrayed, feels thin and out of focus without the reinforcing literary power of being inside the characters’ heads. It’s a very teenage love - melodramatic and all-encompassing - which is fitting both for a Romeo and Juliet pastiche and to tap into the emotions of the book’s target audience. And while the actors do sell it, I felt the show could have moved me further if it spent more time showing us the characters falling in love.
That said, the ending packs a real emotional punch, and across the board, it’s a strong ensemble cast, with actors hitting the right emotional notes of humour and briskness. The set design and blocking are also elegant and well thought through. As an accompaniment to the novel, Noughts and Crosses more than fulfills its brief, as evidenced by the strong audience reaction and rapturous applause at the play’s end. It’s definitely a polished and self-assured production, and for a fan of the book or a student currently reading it, this will surely be a captivating treat.