Alistair McDowall’s Pomona, hailed as one of 2014’s most exciting new plays when it opened at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond, is to transfer to the National Theatre in London and Manchester’s Royal Exchange.
A dark and startling thriller staged in a sunken pit, Pomona has a plot that takes in a young woman’s search for her missing twin, Manchester’s M60 ring road, role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, and the memorable mask of a “big, giant monster thing, with an octopus head”. Lyn Gardner called the play a “deeply unsettling theatrical weapon”, Michael Billington drew comparisons to Stephen Poliakoff and HP Lovecraft, and Susannah Clapp declared McDowall to be “a grim wit who makes naturalism and surrealism look like best friends”.
Writing about Pomona in the Guardian, McDowall, who is in his late 20s, explained: “I wanted to write a play that was set in today’s world, within the information-rich and hyper-connected culture we’ve built for ourselves.”
The play was programmed by artistic director Paul Miller as part of his inaugural season at the Orange Tree. Miller took over from Sam Walters, who founded the theatre in 1971. McDowall’s play brought a new, significantly younger audience to the Richmond theatre: 45% of those who saw Pomona were new to the Orange Tree and 25% were under the age of 30. There were £10 tickets for the under-30s at every performance.
Pomona will be staged at the National’s Temporary theatre in September and at the Royal Exchange in October.
“I’m thrilled that Ali’s play will be seen by many more people on the South Bank [in London] and in Manchester, in Ned Bennett’s quite brilliant production,” Miller told the Guardian. “New work is the lifeblood of any theatre, and more than 4,800 people saw this audacious and original piece of theatre in Richmond. We will carry on mounting adventurous new work despite the loss of regular Arts Council England funding this year, which is why we’re proud to be producing Adam Barnard’s innovative new play buckets in May, and working with Sheffield Theatres to bring back Deborah Bruce’s glorious The Distance to the OT, after a run at the Crucible Studio, this autumn. These are challenging times for the Orange Tree, but I have no doubt about one thing: the real risk lies in taking no risks.”
