Review: Noughts & Crosses

Mar 21 2008 by Mike Smith, Western Mail

Sherman Theatre, Cardiff

MAYBE it was the fact that my head was already reeling from the sheer volume of noise from the school kids gathered in the foyer of the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff.

But after moving into the main auditorium, I found Noughts & Crosses too long and – well, too hackneyed.

Dominic Cooke has adapted and directed the Malorie Blackman novel for the Royal Shakespeare Company with teenage audiences very much in mind.

I have not read the book and apparently the basic conceit – that the oppressors (the Crosses) are black and the oppressed (the Blanks) are white – is not revealed until the story is well under way. Of course, on stage this cannot – or is not – attempted.

Anyway, there are shades of Northern Ireland's sectarian divides, echoes of Romeo and Juliet etc, etc, so the colours are presumably symbolic rather than actual.

Having been raised on at least 30 years of role reversal theatre – gay/straight, male/female, black/white, you name it, I've seen it – I hope this is a rather fresher concept for teenage audiences.

If, however, we had been given a more contemporary and less well-trodden path – say Christians and Muslims in Kosovo – the play would not have seemed rather dated.

Our key characters are a “Blanker” boy, 16-year-old Callum, who is friends with a 14-year-old “Dagger” girl Sephy, who just happens to be the daughter of the country's very rich Deputy Prime Minister.

Callum's mother used to work for Sephy's mother but they fell out leaving the Blanker family even worse off.

When Callum gets into an exclusive school that Sephy attends, both children are tormented by their own peer groups – and their own families – for being friends across the divide.

Callum's sister lives in a dream world which we are later told is because her boyfriend, from the other community, was murdered and she was left for dead.

Callum's brother Jude has not been given a proper education because when his mother lost her job the family could only afford the school fees for one of the boys – this drives him into the hands of the liberation militia.

When the daughter kills herself, the father Ryan McGregor also joins the ranks.

All the worlds start to untangle when the father and son are involved in a supermarket bomb. Callum discovers the plot and rushes off to warn Sephy who is out shopping with her mother.

From there on we have all manner of high drama.

After one innocent night together, Callum and Sephy plan to run away together but when Callum fails to respond to a secret message from Sephy, she thinks he has rejected her. In true Shakespearean style, the message never gets to Callum who is so convinced Sephy has abandoned him he too joins the militants.

Years later he agrees to kidnap her and ransom her for money and the release of prisoners. Left to guard the prisoner, the two star-crossed lovers renew their love – but the complications don’t end there.

Richard Madden as Callum and Ony Uhiara as Sephy express the poignancy of doomed love. There are powerful performances from Tyrone Huggins and Jo Martin, playing Sephy's parents, while Phil McKee is a heavily accented Celt bringing the drama to our shores. And Michelle Butterly, as Callum's mum, is a real joy to watch.

What did the audience make of it? They were silent during the moments of high drama and any sign of affection between the characters resulted in the usual girly sighs or nervous titters.

Then the pivotal scene where Callum and Sephy spend that night locked in one another's arms elicited a “get in there”.

But apart from that, I should imagine the audience found this an interesting night of theatre.

The show runs until tomorrow. The box office number is 029 2064 6900