Displaying items by tag: Alistair McDowall
What Evil Lurks Below The Darkened Landscape of Manchester’s Pomona?
Pomona at Steep Theatre is among the most exhilarating productions I have seen this year. Directed by Robin Witt, who selected this imaginative script by British playwright Alistair McDowall, the play follows a familiar theme in British crime dramas: the disappearance of working girls, spirited away in this case from house of prostitution.
But Pomona is much more than that. Set in the real-life Pomona, a once fashionable and now abandoned acreage encircled by England’s M50 freeway, and bordered by two canals in the city center of Manchester, it conjures up the terror associated with an unlit, unpopulated terrain that makes a dark hole in the brightly lit cityscape.
The action centers around the world of two night watchmen (abbove) – bearded, burly Moe (Nate Faustman) and his young sidekick Charlie (Brandon Rivera) – who are charged with guarding Pomona from unauthorized visitors. At rare intervals, unmarked vans are admitted, driving into the flat terrain before disappearing into a warren of subterranean passages and vaults. Neither Moe nor Charlie know who is in the vans, or what happens below ground in what are supposedly former World War II shelters. The truth we learn later is even more nefarious than Moe, Charlie or the audience might have guessed.
This dystopian tale is also in part a staged realization of the type of role playing found in Dungeons & Dragons. The game itself also appears as part of the action, as it happens to be Charlie’s major social outlet when he is not at work.
As the play opens, we meet a graying, world-weary Manchester real estate mogul, Zeppo (Peter Moore), sitting atop a packing crate next to Ollie (Amber Sollis), who is seeking his help to locate her sister, who she believes may have disappeared into the subterranean Pomona. Behind them sits a mysterious individual wearing an extraterrestrial mask. Periodically Zeppo directs Ollie to hand the creature a nugget.
The three rotate continuously before the audience in a sustained introductory dialog in what is an intriguing bit of stageplay. This also serves as a praecis to the drama to come, and sets the essential theme of the play: absolving oneself of moral culpability by remaining ignorant. Reluctant to get involved, Zeppo finally agrees to help Ollie, but offers her a warning, philosophizing that he believes in “selective education,” meaning there are some things it is better not to know about.
These days, “You can’t be a good person; there is no such thing,” Zeppo postulates. “There are only those who know the pain they are causing; and those who don’t.” Ignorance is, if not bliss, at least a form of absolution.
The cinematic style of the script and staging cuts rapidly to four successive scenes, introducing more characters, all of whom are desperate. (It reminded me of the movie, “Crash.”) Fay (Ashlyn Lozano) a woman on the run pleading with her babysitter to stay with her child; cold-blooded Keaton (Phoebe Moore), ordering her investment advisor to withdraw all her money and burn it; Moe and Charlie injuring themselves to stage an alibi.
As the story unfolds, these scenes (which jump around in time) all become clear. The provocative scenes also draw us into the action, and McDowall doesn’t let us go. The show flies by for 100 minutes (no intermission).
The entire cast is uniformly excellent, though I grew to love the range delivered by Brandon Rivera, whose Charlie runs the gamut of dramatic personae: the role-playing Dungeon Master, the nerdy young man hoping to find a girlfriend, the naïve protégé of Moe, and a sobered individual who refuses to go on. Nate Faust brought a layered sensitivity to his role as Moe, with moving scenes in which he displays vulnerability with Fay, and an unlikely nurturance for Charlie.
Kudos to dialect coach Adam Goldstein on the Manchester accents – completely convincing (and I have been there a few times) – but the cast exercised careful discipline in consistency here. Likewise applause for Joe Schermoly (Scenic Design), Brandon Wardell (Lighting) and Jenny Pinson (Props) for an integrated and effective whole. Costumes by Aly Amidei are also noteworthy. Pomona has been selling out, so let's hope the run is extended. Pomona runs through September 14 at Steep Theatre, 1115 W. Berwyn in Chicago.
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