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Noughts & Crosses

 
Laura Tucker Review by Laura Tucker 4 Published: 12 Jul 2025 Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park Show Dates: 28 Jun 2025-26 Jul 2025

London in summer is like no place else on Earth – a warm and bustling metropolis blooming with the unexpected and the beautiful.

A bold, politically loaded fable staged with wit, clarity and care

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is one such summer surprise: a 1,240-seat, tree-lined amphitheatre where birds swoop overhead and the city fades into the greenery. Until late September, it hosts an ambitious programme of theatre, music and dance – and this month, Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses takes centre stage.

Adapted by Dominic Cooke and directed by Tinuke Craig, the production reframes Blackman’s bestselling YA novel as a breathless, tightly wound tragedy. Knowingly echoing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, two young lovers are divided – not by family name, but by a flipped racial caste system. Here, the white Noughts are the oppressed working class; the Black Crosses, the ruling elite. The result is a sharp, unsettling allegory that still hits hard, more than 20 years after the book was first published.

Noah Valentine and Corinna Brown lead a large, energetic ensemble as Callum and Sephy, lovers caught between affection and ideology. The chemistry between them feels urgent and true, while the surrounding cast observe the action from above, intensifying the already simmering tension.

The set is all industrial metalwork – stark, functional and imposing in equal measure. Crisp sound design punctuates the story with public broadcasts and propaganda, disrupting the intimacy of the central romance with a creeping sense of political doom.

Though billed as a teenage love story, Noughts & Crosses delivers something weightier – a bold, politically charged fable staged with wit, clarity and care. Performed under an open sky and flanked by trees, it’s exactly the kind of dynamic spectacle that makes summer in London worth sticking around for.

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The Blurb:

Widely considered to be one of the 21st century’s greatest novels, Malorie Blackman’s best-selling Noughts & Crosses, a bittersweet love story with echoes of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, is revived for the London stage in this brand-new production. By a secluded beach Callum and Sephy meet in secret; life-long friends living on separate sides of a divided world. When Callum, from a Nought family, is accepted to Sephy’s prestigious Cross school, will it bring them closer, or will the hate and fear that surrounds them drive them apart? Dominic Cooke’s ‘excellent adaptation’ (The Independent) of this epic story set against the political backdrop of a deeply divided society, is directed by Associate Artistic Director Tinuke Craig (A Raisin in the Sun) in her Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre debut.