Noughts & Crosses at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre: depressingly relevant

This striking adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s young adult novel is a Romeo and Juliet story set in a segregated 21st century Britain where black people (Crosses, or ‘daggers’) enjoy privilege and power and whites (Noughts, or ‘blankers’) are a subjugated underclass. It’s a bold and thought-provoking piece that tackles emergent teenage sexuality, violence, alcoholism and suicide as well as racism. It’s recommended for over-14s: the books and the 2020 BBC series were aimed at over-12s.

Tinuke Craig’s strident production is illuminated by strong performances, particularly from the exuberantly expressive Heartstopper star Corinna Brown as our upper-class heroine Persephone ‘Sephy’ Hadley. When characters aren’t involved in a scene they gather as sinister watchers on Colin Richmond’s starkly industrial set, enhancing the air of suspicion and menace. The background is full of shrieks and shadows. At a time when old-school prejudices are increasingly legitimised in mainstream political discourse, this interrogation of the absurdity of racism also feels timely and necessary.

If the subject matter is unflinchingly adult, though, the tone of both Craig’s production and Dominic Cooke’s script can be patronising. The main black adult characters are uniformly arrogant and icily sardonic, the whites all speak an oiky glottal mockney, and the expression of adolescent physicality borders on the cartoonish.

Corinna Brown (Sephy) and Noah Valentine (Callum) (Manuel Harlan)

There’s no backstory given for how this version of Britain, a mixture of Jim Crow America and apartheid South Africa, came about. We’re pitched straight in, with Sephy and her white best friend Callum (Noah Valentine, in his professional stage debut) meeting illicitly on her family’s private beach. Her dad’s the deputy PM, while his mum used to be the Hadleys’ housekeeper.

Their mere fraternisation would be frowned upon, their squeamish first kiss (eeurgh!) viewed as scandalous. Callum’s sister was beaten so badly by a gang of fellow-Noughts for dating a Cross that she suffered brain damage and now believes she is black. His dad and his angry older brother Jude (Alec Boaden) are flirting with the insurgent Liberation Militia (“one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”). Callum, however, is part of a small tranche of bright Noughts to be admitted to Sephy’s elite Crosses-only school, as a social experiment. You can guess how well that goes.

Corinna Brown (Sephy) and cast in Noughts & Crosses (Manuel Harlan)

The way repression from above breeds reciprocal hatred among the oppressed is well expressed here. But at just over two hours’ stage time, some characterisations are inevitably thin and some issues skated over. Distressed by her husband’s infidelity, Sephy’s wintry mum Jasmine (Amanda Bright) spends most of the play with a glass of Chablis fused to her hand. Sephy’s own subsequent slide into underage drinking evaporates as suddenly as it appears.

There’s strong chemistry between Brown and Valentine as Sephy and Callum, but where she explores the full gamut of emotions of a character ageing from 14 to 17, he operates on a pitch of sickened anguish throughout. As Jude, Boaden expresses a bottled rage that positively crackles. Jessica Layde entertains as Sephy’s snarky sister Minerva.

The shopping mall bombing that’s a pivot point of the story is shocking, as is the punitive official retribution that follows. The scene where Jude and a radicalized Callum kidnap Sephy is soused with latent threat. This is strong stuff, sometimes expressed in broad strokes, but depressingly relevant.

Noughts & Crosses at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, until 26 July, openairtheatre.com.