The N&N festival Crosses the Line on tour
Posted on 19th May 2026
The Norfolk & Norwich Festival has often been criticised for being heavily centred on Norwich, so the regional tour of Crossing the Line was a welcome commitment to the wider county. Having already been performed in Great Yarmouth, Sheringham and Lowestoft, the production moved on to Diss. A near-capacity audience saw Helena McBurney’s stage adaptation of Tia Fisher’s novel – a visceral reimagining of Fisher’s tale of a young boy seduced through poverty into the murky world of drug dealing. Played out with naturalistic dialogue rather than verse, Alex Hardie was able to invest Erik with an adolescent mindset that propels him toward trouble with heartbreaking pathos.
The abiding message of the book and play is that County lines crime — a policing term describing urban drug networks extending into smaller towns via dedicated phone lines — targets school-age children, lured into selling drugs through money, praise and the promise of belonging, via phone-line networks run by organised crime. Shyam Patel instilled an unnerving stillness into the head of the criminal gang, crystallising into one character the more diffuse menace of the novel. He displayed a chameleon-like ability to adapt on stage, also portraying Erik’s Tigger-like best friend Ravi, as well as Ravi’s discreetly generous dad. Ralph Prosser acquits himself well as the bully that gets the ball rolling, while it is Rachael Cummins who gets to explore the most interesting aspects of tangled emotional complexity, as her narrative as Erik’s mum weaves together grief, guilt, escape and regret.
When Erik’s crimes come to a head and his mother asks if it is all her fault, Erik tells her that it is. In that exchange the play crystallises its central tragedy: vulnerable young people can come to see the very people trying to help them as part of the trap they are trying to escape. It is a gap that organisations such as the Norwich-based Joe Dix Foundation, The Children’s Society and Safe4Me try to fill, groups that the play — and the Q&A afterwards — unapologetically promote. It was in that Q&A that we got to meet Fisher herself, a passionate advocate for youngsters whom she persuasively argued are modern slaves. Katie Thompson rightly took a bow for directing the play with such energy and pace. The greatest impact, however, was made by the bravery of Adam, who discussed his own past as a drug dealer, and how support and empathy were the key to his escape from it.