'It's a tax write-off. This is where they send the new, the under-qualified, the old. And most of all the British. Mars is full of blonde Americans. It's like they're building the master race out there.'

Billions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.

To lose all sense of it.

To start seeing things in the dark outside.

Alistair McDowall's play X premiered at the Royal Court on 30 March 2016 in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.