November 24, 2011
Noughts and Crosses packs a punch. And the girl gets it. Not any girl, but posho Sephy Hadley (played with increasing conviction by Emmanuella Kwenortey) , the younger daughter of the Deputy Prime Minister (assured Saras Main). The Hadley family is perceived as the apogee of privileged Crosses elite.
But the blows don’t stop there. They land on upstart Shania (Emma James), a despised nought (‘never with a capital’), who along with two others, including the hero Callum McGregor (engaging Sam Elwin) wins a place at exclusive Heathcroft School. Grudgingly admitted, they dare to accept.
When Shania’s bloody temple is plastered, after a playground assault, Sephy naively comments on Shania’s dressing: it leaps out.
And so does the issue. It’s skin colour. ‘There were no white plasters, only brown,’ Shania tells her. Heathcroft stocks no other, because there is no demand. All its pupils are black, and white skinned noughts only exist outside its walls to service the lifestyle of a black elite.
But in director Phosile Mashinkila’s brave, ambitious RSC-scripted adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s ground breaking 2001 novel, skin colour is not cosmetic. It is everything: the difference between life and death.
Romeo and Juliet may have been Blackman’s initial inspiration for Sephy and Callum’s doomed love in a deeply divided society, but she works it for today. Sephy’s mother, Jasmine (excellent Lulu Rahma Haseeb) and Callum’s traumatised younger sister are particularly moving. Angus De Wilton’s angry Jude, and Chris Mannino’s painfully conflicted Ryan move with their flinty resolve.
The tragic events which unfold in this powerful production may have extreme outcomes, but they are for today. What first attracted attention to Stephen Lawrence that night? Apart from walking on the pavement, that is? Oh, and he was described as ‘full of promise’. Did any of the alleged group of assailants have such a courageous mother as Fiona Johnson’s careworn Meggie McGregor?
But the blows don’t stop there. They land on upstart Shania (Emma James), a despised nought (‘never with a capital’), who along with two others, including the hero Callum McGregor (engaging Sam Elwin) wins a place at exclusive Heathcroft School. Grudgingly admitted, they dare to accept.
When Shania’s bloody temple is plastered, after a playground assault, Sephy naively comments on Shania’s dressing: it leaps out.
And so does the issue. It’s skin colour. ‘There were no white plasters, only brown,’ Shania tells her. Heathcroft stocks no other, because there is no demand. All its pupils are black, and white skinned noughts only exist outside its walls to service the lifestyle of a black elite.
But in director Phosile Mashinkila’s brave, ambitious RSC-scripted adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s ground breaking 2001 novel, skin colour is not cosmetic. It is everything: the difference between life and death.
Romeo and Juliet may have been Blackman’s initial inspiration for Sephy and Callum’s doomed love in a deeply divided society, but she works it for today. Sephy’s mother, Jasmine (excellent Lulu Rahma Haseeb) and Callum’s traumatised younger sister are particularly moving. Angus De Wilton’s angry Jude, and Chris Mannino’s painfully conflicted Ryan move with their flinty resolve.
The tragic events which unfold in this powerful production may have extreme outcomes, but they are for today. What first attracted attention to Stephen Lawrence that night? Apart from walking on the pavement, that is? Oh, and he was described as ‘full of promise’. Did any of the alleged group of assailants have such a courageous mother as Fiona Johnson’s careworn Meggie McGregor?