Noughts & Crosses (DOMINIC COOKE/RSC VERSION) (NHB Modern Plays) (Royal Shakespeare Company)

Malorie Blackman; Dominic Cooke

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1854599399 ISBN 13: 9781854599391

Publisher: Nick Hern Books, 2007

With echoes of Romeo and Juliet, Noughts and Crosses is an electrifying, bittersweet love story set in a society divided by racial bigotry and a world rocked by terrorism. Sephy (a Cross) is the daughter of the Deputy Prime Minister. Callum is the son of a Nought agitator. United by a shared sense of injustice as children, and separated by intolerance as they grow up, their desire to be together begins to eclipse all family loyalty sparking a political crisis of unimaginable proportions.

Dominic Cooke's thrilling stage adaptation of Malorie Blackman's hugely successful novel was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2007

Product Description:

"Noughts and Crosses" is about a black girl called Sephy and a white boy called Callum and their friendship in a world that's divided by the colour of your skin - and how their feelings for each other grow as they grow older and grow up. As Malorie Blackman herself says: 'I wanted to turn society as we know it on its head, with new names for the major divisions, ie Noughts (the underclass) and Crosses (the majority, ruling society). I wanted to see this new world through the eyes of the main two characters, Callum (a nought) and Sephy (a Cross).'

Review:

Dominic Cooke's excellent adaptation... a dark, politically unsentimentalised story about teenage love transcending the barriers in a deeply divided society... heart-rending. --Independent

I haven't read the Malorie Blackman novel which Dominic Cooke has adapted and directed for the RSC; and, for once, I was grateful for my innocence. I found myself caught up in the narrative twists of this absorbing political allegory which posits a society in which a white underclass, the Noughts, is pitted against a ruling black majority, the Crosses...Clearly, the play doesn't offer a realistic picture of modern Britain but still expresses disturbing truths about a society in which worth and status are determined by racial origins. --Guardian