There's no fairytale redemption offered in Noughts and Crosses, Dominic Cooke's gripping adaptation for the RSC of Malorie Blackman's best-selling novel for teenagers. Black-man's provocatively expectation-confounding society has the black Crosses rule harshly over the white under-class Noughts, with Sephy and Callum, two young friends and would-be lovers, caught in the crossfire of received prejudice.
There are intriguing over-tones of all sorts of conflict here - the US Civil Rights movement, South African apartheid, Northern Ireland - as well as unmistakable echoes of Romeo and Juliet, but what there is most of all is a cracking good narrative, which Cooke's fluid production highlights. The exigencies of the RSC's new temporary home in the Civic Hall mean no set, just props and the restorative power of theatre to conjure an entire engrossing world from emptiness.
Ony Uhiara's delightful Sephy is a spiky, sparky, gawky-confident young woman painfully aware of both her privileged life and her family's emotional numbness. Richard Madden's Callum struggles to match this, resorting to a default setting of surliness. No matter, as anyone embarking on this particular game of Noughts and Crosses will emerge a winner.
Beauty, until 5 Jan (08700 500 511, www.lyric.co.uk). Noughts, until 2 Feb (0844 800 1110, www.rsc.org.uk).
