Stage Door News
Stage Door News
There is a hole. A hole in the middle of the city. Beginning November 1, 2016 ARC invites audiences down the rabbit hole for the North American premiere of Alistair McDowall’s critically acclaimed urban horror story POMONA.
A woman is missing. Her sister is searching. As she comes closer to revealing the dark truth, the fabric of her own life becomes twisted into a strange loop until she can no longer be sure what is fantasy, what is myth, and what is the very real result of a society conditioned to look the other way in the face of human evil.
The fourth play from rising UK star Alistair McDowall, POMONA was commissioned for The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 2014 and performed at The Gate Theatre in London as part of the NEW festival of plays. It then went on to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, South West London, in November 2014. The production was a critical success and was featured in Lyn Gardner's Top 10 Theatre of 2014 in The Guardian. She cited the play’s humour and moral ambiguity, and called it “a dark, fractured and deeply unsettling theatrical weapon.”
The Toronto production will be performed by ARC Resident artists Aviva Armour-Ostroff, Liza Balkan, Deborah Drakeford, Carlos González-Vío, Ryan Hollyman, Andre Sills, and Bahareh Yaraghi, and directed by ARC Artistic Producer Christopher Stanton.
“The instant I encountered POMONA, I was entranced,” said Stanton. “Stylistically, it’s a dark little gem - constantly surprising and truly unnerving. Identity is fluid, reality blends seamlessly into fantasy and then into horror. At times it’s mythical in its scope. It’s also funny as hell.
“POMONA demands that we examine our own complicity in creating an immoral and violent world, particularly with regard to gendered violence. The serial murders of marginalized women in Vancouver’s downtown east side, the sickening stream of missing and murdered indigenous women across the country - these horrors can only take root when a society tacitly agrees to look the other way. Pomona challenges us directly: how can we be better?”
The play centres on a young woman named Ollie. In a desperate search for her missing sister, she finds all roads lead to Pomona – a very real abandoned concrete island at the heart of Manchester that has become the stuff of urban legend. Sometimes referred to as the lost island of Pomona, the slim stretch of land used to be home to a bustling docklands but now is isolated and in ruin.
POMONA will be on stage in Toronto from November 1 to November 19, 2016. (Opening night: November 3). Single tickets are available from $19 to $34, and can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com/event/2580343. For more information visit arcstage.com .
Twitter: @arcstage
Hashtag: #pomonaTO
Photo: Pomona in Manchester.
2016-10-11
Toronto: ARC presents the North American premiere of "Pomona" November 1-19