Malorie Blackman’s 2001 novel Noughts and Crosses which reverses the racial power balance in a country called Albion, was adapted for stage by Dominic Cooke in 2007.  The Crosses are superior black people in political power with privilege and wealth.  The Noughts are the lower class, white, poor, employed in low paid jobs with little or no access to education and subject to capital punishment.  The novel was written for adolescents but even for the younger age group it feels too broad brush and simplistic and takes no account of mixed race. 

Noughts and Crosses has its own Romeo and Juliet story where an unlikely friendship develops between Persephone (Corinna Brown) a Cross and Callum (Noah Valentine) a Nought. Callum met Seph when his mother M4ggie (Kate Kordel) worked for Seph’s family. Callum’s sister Lynette (Chanel Waddock) has been left with severe mental health problems and is transracial after being attacked and beaten up by a group of Crosses while she was with a Cross boyfriend.

Callum’s brother Jude (Alec Boaden) and his father Ryan (Richard Riddell) are both attracted to a Nought political organisation called Liberation Militia which is branded as a terrorist organisation by the Cross government with the death penalty for terrorism.