Pomona (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

Every time I catch a Metrolink tram between Salford Quays and Manchester city centre, I'm fascinated by the stop at Pomona. It's an empty, soulless, despairing place. Nobody ever gets on, and nobody ever gets off. The tram stops, waits a few seconds, then continues on its way. Nobody is ever seen there, and there's barely any movement beyond tumbling litter and the occasional disorientated pigeon.

Pomona is a lonesome place in the heart of Manchester which seems to exist outside of normal reality. There's just nothing there, apart from graffiti-scrawled walls and what appear to be empty office blocks. And it's this same experience that inspired 28-year-old Alistair McDowall to write Pomona, which has won him a London Evening Standard Theatre Award nomination for Most Promising Playwright.

Everywhere has a place like Pomona, a place that defies any attempt to explain its reason for being there - where I live in Llandudno, it's the infamous former Pier Pavilion site; down the coast in Rhyl, it's the Lotto-funded white elephant that is the Children's Village; in my birthplace of Derby it's the Riverlights area of the city. But what goes on in these uncanny places, where nothing ever seems to happen, but in reality, anything could, because basically nobody's really looking or checking.

Guy Rhys as Zeppo

Pomona is jumbled, its scenes don't play out in chronological order. So you might see a character's demise long before you find out how and why they got to that point. It's a bit like those American TV dramas that show you something amazing happening in the pre-credits sequence, then cut to a caption saying "Six hours earlier..." and proceed to show you how that amazing something came about. But unlike a TV show, you can't pause and rewind Pomona, and you can only rewatch it if you pay for another night's tickets, so it's harder to get a grip on the chronology. It demands that the audience concentrates more.

It's also hard to summarise the plot. What happens in the play is open to interpretation, but at its core it's a story about the city (any city, not necessarily Manchester) and the people who live in it. Often these are drifting souls: there aren't many "together" characters in Pomona. Most are lost (either literally or spiritually), or searching for something. The early exchange between real estate bigwig Zeppo (inexplicably dressed in Y-fronts and parka) and sweet little Ollie, who is searching for her missing sister, has clear focus and much to say. Zeppo never gets involved in who rents his city properties, or what they do in them. If he doesn't get involved in other people's lives, if he doesn't ask questions , he won't suffer the same fate as his father, who did get involved and who got killed for doing so. Zeppo's outlook is a reflection on the disconnection in society, particularly in cities. Don't ask, don't tell. People turn a blind eye these days, often through fear, but mostly because it would simply be too much bother to get involved.

Zeppo ignores what might be going on in the mysterious urban wasteland that is Pomona. The audience does find out what is going on in the subterranean realm beneath Pomona, and the truth is, quite frankly, disturbing. I was genuinely horrified when I found out what was going on in Pomona, and I sincerely hope McDowall didn't base it on even a scrap of truth!

Sean Rigby as Moe and Sam Swann
as Charlie

We also meet the endearing Charlie. By day he immerses himself in the fantastical worlds of RPG (Role Playing Games) and makes up amazing and gruesome stories about the Great Old One Cthulu, an ancient deity created by American author H P Lovecraft in 1928. By night, Charlie joins taciturn Moe acting as a kind of gatekeeper at the entrance to Pomona. They don't know what they are guarding, but occasionally a lorry will arrive and they'll have to let it through the gates. They never ask questions, they don't get involved.

There are other characters too, but it's never quite clear whether they are real, and if they are, just whose reality they're in. There's the aggressive Gale, a cross between Begbie from Trainspotting and Missy from Doctor Who, who is in the employ of the cut-throat Keaton. But is Keaton really as heartless as we're led to believe, because on some occasions in the play she is a sweet innocent who gets involved in Charlie's RPG fantasies. It's interesting that Keaton is one of the few characters who voluntarily "gets involved" in someone else's life. Is the "bad Keaton" just an RPG fantasy creation?

The performances are all strong, particularly Sam Swann as the decidedly odd Charlie. Swann manages to portray two distinct sides to his character: the endearing geek we see trying to ask Keaton out on a date is quite different to the side of him that wants to ejaculate all over the world and dribble rivulets of spit from his mouth. Not so endearing. Rochenda Sandall is genuinely unsettling as the tough Gale (I certainly wouldn't cross her!), while Guy Rhys gives a wonderfully diverse turn as Zeppo. He provides humour in the play's opening salvo, but also delivers the truthfulness of his monologue with great power and focus. Rebecca Humphries is convincingly disconnected and damaged as prostitute Fay, and her tense conversation with the emotionally suppressed but physically dangerous Moe (Sean Rigby) is a hypnotic still-point in the play. I loved Sarah Middleton's otherness as Keaton, her gunshot retorts to Charlie's attempts at conversation just as frustrating for the audience as for him ("Why? Why? Why?"). Nadia Clifford has the smallest character to play with (and by small, I mean the one with the fewest extremes - in essence, the most normal of them all, the everywoman caught up in the confusion), but she manages to portray Ollie's sweetness, curiosity and concern to get the audience on her side, like a 21st century Alice in Wonderland.

Why are the characters named after early Hollywood film icons? Oliver Hardy, Buster Keaton, Fay Wray, Zeppo Marx, Moe Howard, Charlie Chaplin... I don't know, just as I don't know who Gale is supposed to evoke. Gale Robbins? Dorothy Gale? Another question left open to interpretation.

I also want to mention Giles Thomas's sound and music composition, which is key to making Pomona as unsettling a play as it is. It thrums away in the background, slowly drilling its way into your subconscious and making you discomforted without you realising how or why. Just as integral is Elliot Griggs's lighting, which uses pitch darkness and stark brightness to maximum disorientating effect.

Rochenda Sandall as Gale

Questions over what is real and what is not run through the play, and McDowall bravely gives very few answers. Ollie is looking for her sister who she believes went missing in Pomona, but by the end of the play I was left wondering whether her sister is even real, and that maybe Ollie is imagining she has a sister because events conspire to wipe her memory, and perhaps she just remembers looking for someone who is, in essence, herself. It doesn't make much sense written here, and it barely makes sense when you sit and watch it live, but one thing's for sure, it's creative and involving theatre which makes you think. It either makes you think, or you just give up and reject what you've seen as bunkum. I'm sure there was a proportion of the audience which left the theatre in a confused daze (maybe the older attendees whose understanding of Cthulu and RPG, and comprehension of "covering the world in jizz", may be limited).

McDowall has written a challenging piece, not just because it's told out of order, and not just because it features uncompromising characters (prostitutes, criminals and thugs). Pomona is challenging because it dares to stop short of making sense. The play will probably make a different kind of sense to each and every person who sees it, and I'm certain the playwright's sense will be different to mine. Trying to make sense of Pomona is an individual requirement. I have no idea why Zeppo appeared at the end claiming to be a seagull but practically dressed as a penguin. I have no idea whether Ollie had a sister or just imagined she did. And I certainly have no idea whether the tentacled Cthulu creature was real or simply symbolic (I'm happy to believe it was in no way real!). But you know what? It's fun to make these decisions for yourself, and even more fun to hear what others think.

Maybe there is no right or wrong way to understand Pomona. But one thing's certain: after seeing this play, there's no way I'll be getting off at that tram stop, and I very much doubt others will either. As Moe says in the play, bad things are real, even if they are squid-masked monsters from the dawn of time. Best thing is to just not get involved...

The stats
Writer: Alistair McDowall
Director: Ned Bennett
Cast: Nadia Clifford (Ollie); Rebecca Humphries (Fay); Sarah Middleton (Keaton); Guy Rhys (Zeppo); Sean Rigby (Moe); Rochenda Sandall (Gale); Sam Swann (Charlie)
Performed at Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, October 29th to November 21st, 2015. Performance reviewed: November 7th, 2015 (matinee)

Links
Pomona on Royal Exchange website (retrieved Nov 9th 2015)
Pomona on National Theatre website (retrieved Nov 9th 2015)
Pomona: The Lost Island of Manchester on the Guardian website (retrieved Nov 9th 2015)
Pomona trailer (retrieved Nov 9th 2015)