Ruth Leon’s Pocket Theatre Review – Noughts and Crosses

This is an adaptation of a wildly successful young adult novel by British writer Malorie Blackman. It has been adapted for the stage by Dominic Cooke.

Set in a segregated violent post-21st-century England, it is a love story of teenagers, one White, one Black, separated by a rigidly divided society in which all authority rests with the Black half of the population. Noughts are White, and reviled, Crosses are Black, and envied.

The girl’s father is a senior politician, the mother a wine-swilling shopping addict. The boy’s father is a gruff working man, the mother a former nanny to the girl’s family. To make things even more formulaic, the girl has a snooty older sister, the boy an older brother who is a member of a violent anti-establishment group that will blow up a shopping centre.

Despite the excellent performances from the huge cast of actors, some playing multiple characters, all adhering to their Black and White reverse stereotypes, I find this revisionist view of the world absurdly simplistic and old-fashioned. Every racial cliché is exploited in harsh contrasts.
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The staging, by director Tinuke Craig, is largely a matter of the cast restlessly moving the furniture around the multi-level set and running up and down stairs and gantries, making the production more closely resemble Snakes and Ladders than Noughts and Crosses.

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