Visually, it’s dazzling but Noughts & Crosses wilts under the weight of its YA source material

Star-crossed lovers: Noah Valentine (Callum) and Corinna Brown (Sephy) in ‘Noughts & Crosses’ - (Manuel Harlan)

There’s an undeniable synergy to staging Noughts & Crosses at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. Malorie Blackman’s searing YA novel (published in 2001) of forbidden love and systemic racism plays out beneath an amber summer sky that gradually darkens as the story slides into something increasingly bleak, brutal, and cautionary.

Set in a dystopian world rigidly divided by race, where dark-skinned Crosses hold power over light-skinned Noughts, the plot follows the affluent Cross Sephy (Corinna Brown) and Nought Callum (Noah Valentine), whose forbidden friendship and eventual romance face violent opposition amid rising terrorism and social unrest, with their families caught in the fray. They navigate betrayal, heartbreak, and the harsh truths of a segregated society.