Oppression, injustice and violent death are not, perhaps, the first things that come to mind when we think of Christmas shows. They are, however, the themes of two striking adaptations of popular fantasy novels - Noughts & Crosses and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The former, adapted and directed by Dominic Cooke from Malorie Blackman's award-winning story, depicts an alternative apartheid world where the powerful Crosses have subjugated the Nought underclass. Childhood friends Sephy (Ony Uhiara) and Callum (Richard Madden) believe their love will triumph over the barriers of segregation. But she is the daughter of the Cross deputy prime minister and he the son of a Nought nobody-turned-terrorist. When Callum becomes one of the first Noughts to gain entrance to Sephy's Cross school, the pair begin to learn the power of prejudice.
Blackman's fast-paced, cascading series of cliffhanger chapters are presented on a bare stage across which, like crashing waves, the actors swirl, bearing tables, chairs, desks - whatever necessary to create - in a sudden surprise of stillness - dining rooms, offices, classrooms. At other times the company use nothing more than their bodies - atmospherically lit by Wolfgang Gobbel - to communicate the terror and horror of a shopping-mall bomb blast or the eerie, shivering trees of a night-time forest.
Following the format of the novel, Cooke has the two main characters take it in turns to relate the episodes of their lives. Speaking directly to the audience, they describe their thoughts and feelings as the violent bigotry of their friends and families threatens to destroy their lives. Although both the young protagonists are excellent - Uhiara's modulation of Sephy's not-a-woman-not-a-child mix of naivety, wilfulness, petulance and tenderness is particularly fine - this storytelling device makes the performance feel, at times, more like a dramatised reading than a dramatic adaptation.
The move from page to stage presents another difficulty. The subjugated Noughts are white and the domineering Crosses are black. Blackman says that, in the novel, she only once refers directly to colour. Her readers catch themselves picturing the characters the other way round and so have to question their own assumptions about racial identities. But characters in the theatre are not painted in the imagination: they materialise in the solid flesh of actors. It seems, therefore, given the extreme prejudice that black people still face in the southern United States and the difficulties they face in this country, almost perverse to spend two hours contemplating the lot of poor white people suffering under the yoke of black oppression. Ultimately, though, the production vividly communicates the message of the book: hatred destroys everyone it touches; the only hope lies in love.
The same message underpins CS Lewis's tale, set in the Second World War. Four children, evacuated to a great country house, are transported to a magical land where they must battle the evil White Witch (snarling Clare Foster in a sleigh shaped like a giant white slingback shoe) and release the creatures of Narnia from her curse of eternal winter. Ian Brown's revival of Adrian Mitchell's faithful adaptation casts its own beguiling spell. It has pace, humour, suspense, stirring music (Shaun Davey), fabulous sets (Ruari Murchison) and an audience-astounding transformation when the great lion Aslan (Louis Decosta Johnson, simultaneously kittenish and majestic) resurrects from the dead and leads the children to victory.
· Noughts & Crosses is playing at Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon civichall.co.uk
· The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is playing at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds wyplayhouse.com
· For our guide to the 50 best Christmas shows this season, visit observer.co.ukreview
