Pomona

Alistair McDowall’s thrilling, jizz-stained, genre-literate play is a grimy, geeky hymn to the things beneath our feet, the things in our society we teach ourselves not to see, the monsters that lurk in the shadows.

Crammed with ideas and rich with cultural references, it blew a small hole in the Orange Tree’s programming, when Paul Miller made it part of his inaugural season as artistic director, and was a bold choice by any standard. Now it transfers to the National before a homecoming run at the Royal Exchange – Pomona, the hole in the middle of the city, is a real place in Manchester.

There have been some changes to the staging: the costumes have been refined and, perhaps most noticeably, there’s no longer a sunken pit in the middle of Georgia Lowe’s set. It’s been replaced by a large heptagonal drain, an echo of the role-playing dice that feature prominently in Ned Bennett’s murky, flickering, strip-lit production.

Most of the cast have returned and there are some seriously strong performances, particularly from Rebecca Humphries as damaged but strong-willed sex-worker Fay; there’s also a brilliant rapport between Sean Rigby and Sam Swann’s reluctant hitmen, the latter a curiously endearing jizz-obsessed gamer with no off switch.

On a second viewing, Pomona does feel a little more like a collection of scenes than an entirely satisfying whole, with a pay-off that’s comparatively muted. Yet McDowall writes incredibly memorable monologues and the play’s time-hopping structure is pleasingly intricate, its riffing on complicity and visibility smart and assured.