Pomona

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Description

I think Id sleep a lot easier if I knew none of us would wake up tomorrow. Ollies sister is missing. Searching Manchester in desperation, she finds all roads lead to Pomona - an abandoned concrete island at the heart of the city. Here at the centre of everything, journeys end and nightmares are born. A sinister and surreal thriller from Alistair McDowall, Pomona received its world premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre, London, on 12 November 2014.

Reviews

[A] bruising, brilliant play * Evening Standard *
An exceptionally talented and fast-rising writer . . . While incorporating elements from gaming, mafia thrillers and sci-fi, McDowall's dialogue manages to be arrestingly idiosyncratic and unpredictable. The atmosphere of apocalyptic menace is also shot through with flashes of irresistibly cheeky comic relief. Still only in his twenties, this writer is surely going places. Whatever he dreams up next, his name will almost certainly be in lights at the Royal Court soon, if not at the National Theatre. * The Times *
An unnerving mix of urban nightmare and sci-fi thriller . . . undeniably gripping * Guardian *
A fierce dystopian drama with terrific comic edge. It flashes from casual naturalism to gory horror, from game playing to terrible earnest, form the vatic to the casual . . . McDowall is a grim wit who makes naturalism and surrealism look like best friends. * Observer *
[A] brilliantly creepy and compelling new work by acclaimed young dramatist, Alistair McDowall . . . I greatly look forward to seeing McDowall's next work. * Independent *
Alistair McDowall's thrilling, jizz-stained, genre-literate play is a grimy, geeky hymn to the things beneath our feet, the things in our society we teach ourselves not to see, the monsters that lurk in the shadows. Crammed with ideas and rich with cultural references . . . McDowall writes incredibly memorable monologues and the play's time-hopping structure is pleasingly intricate, its riffing on complicity and visibility smart and assured. * The Stage *
This gripping and deeply unsettling tale of inner-city lowlife is a sensory and dramatic triumph * What's On Stage *
There isn't another play quite like "Pomona." Alistair McDowall is one of a batch of young British writers chucking dramatic form up against the wall. His debut, "Brilliant Adventures," put a functioning time machine into a gritty housing-project drama. "Pomona" is even more ambitious: a science fiction thriller that bleeds into reality and back again. . . . beneath the gloss, the play's a sharp critique of the way we turn horrible realities into stories, and then turn a blind eye. . . . This is singular stuff: fresh, vivid and engrossing, and as delirious as it is dead serious. * Variety *
Alistair McDowells brilliantly imaginative dystopian thriller . . . A cleverly constructed and slickly staged psycho-drama for the digital age . . . a pulsating ride. * Londonist *
an extraordinary cocktail of brutal thriller, sweary magical realism and HP Lovecraft references . . . extraordinary and virtuosic . . . entirely gripping . . . a story about stories, underpinned by one, ominous line: 'everything bad is real'. * Time Out London *
Alistair McDowall mixes myth with urban horror and black with in a way you see in the pages of a graphic novel more often than on the stage. . . . a striking vision of a dystopian Manchester. . . . Pomona shows a young writer with huge potential. . . . McDowall's canny dialogue grounds all his grimness in gabby talk of McNuggets and trainers and Indiana Jones; the dreamlike dovetails with the everyday. Pomona shows a writer working hard to go somewhere new. * The Times *
It takes quite some creative brio to dream up such a spiralling dystopia, which blends gritty reality and fantasy role-play games with all the warped logic of a nightmare. * Evening Standard *
Alistair McDowall's slippery, gripping dystopian thriller . . . enthralling, unexpectedly funny and expertly maintained. . . . Clever, creepy and compelling. * Financial Times *

Author Bio

Alistair McDowall grew up in the North East of England. Brilliant Adventures was awarded a Bruntwood Prize in 2011, and was developed as part of the Young Writers Festival 2012 at the Royal Court. Other plays include Talk Show (Royal Court) and Captain Amazing (Live Theatre). He has been a writer on attachment with the Royal Court, Paines Plough, and the National Theatre Studio (Summer 2013) and was nominated for the Writers Guild Best New Play Award in 2013.