Alistair McDowall’s plays make distant or unsettling places feel closely bound to ordinary human concerns. In Pomona, a piece of wasteland in Manchester becomes the setting for a dark, disorientating story. In X, astronauts stranded on Pluto face isolation far from Earth. The scale changes; the questions about connection, desperation and the search for meaning remain.
Writing between the familiar and the strange
McDowall is a contemporary playwright associated with narratives that place recognisable human experiences against fantastical or surreal backdrops. The contrast matters: the settings may seem remote from everyday life, but the emotional pressures at the centre of the plays are not. Isolation and uncertainty become tangible through the places in which the characters find themselves.
Two works in particular illustrate this approach. Pomona, first staged in 2014, draws on an urban landscape; X, which debuted in 2016, turns to science fiction. Their very different locations allow McDowall to explore related concerns without making the plays interchangeable. One is rooted in Manchester, the other in the desolate expanse of Pluto.
Pomona: the city’s overlooked spaces
Set in a mysterious area of Manchester that shares its name, Pomona brings its characters into a dark narrative in which reality and nightmare blur. The play’s setting is described as a piece of wasteland in the city. Rather than serving only as scenery, that neglected space becomes central to the atmosphere and the story’s sense of unease.
The urban location suggests what can be hidden or ignored within a city. Around it, the play sets ordinary human experience against a near-dystopian mood. Isolation, desperation and the search for meaning are among its stated concerns. The tension comes from holding those elements together: the landscape is strange and threatening, while the human needs within it remain recognisable. Manchester is not simply a place-name attached to the action; it gives the play’s darkness a distinctly urban frame.
X: human connection at a distance
With X, McDowall moves from city wasteland to Pluto. Its astronauts are stranded millions of miles from Earth, and the play explores isolation, human connection and existential dread. The setting makes separation more than a metaphor: distance is built into the characters’ circumstances, giving their relationships particular weight.
The science-fiction premise also changes the scale of the uncertainty. Where Pomona finds menace in an overlooked urban space, X places its characters in a remote and unfamiliar environment. Both plays use atmosphere and setting to bring pressure to bear on human relationships. In X, the unknown surrounds the astronauts; the fragility of connection becomes one way of confronting it. Together, the plays show how a move into the surreal or speculative can keep attention on recognisable vulnerabilities rather than leaving them behind.
Why Alistair McDowall deserves a place in British Legacy
McDowall’s place in British Legacy rests on the dramatic possibilities demonstrated by Pomona and X. The plays set human lives against sharply different environments: a wasteland in Manchester and a distant world beyond Earth. In each, the location does more than supply atmosphere. It helps shape how audiences encounter isolation, uncertainty and the need for connection. That gives McDowall’s work a specific contribution to contemporary British theatre: imaginative settings become a means of examining emotional and social experience.
The two plays also show the range of that method. Pomona draws its unease from an urban space and the possibility that important things may be hidden or ignored; X makes distance and the unknown part of a story about relationships under strain. Neither premise requires easy answers. Their value lies in bringing spectators into unfamiliar worlds while keeping human concerns in view. That combination of surreal or speculative settings with recognisable pressures is a concrete reason to remember McDowall’s work and its contribution to British theatre.