Rocket to the Moon, National Theatre

“Love is no solution to life,” declares a line from Clifford Odets’s 1938 drama; and in straitened times, then and now, it’s a sentiment that carries considerable doleful weight. And yet every character here is in desperate search of that elusive something to elevate the banal business of day-to-day existence – a personal rocket to the moon. Without it, they are trapped in endless Monday mornings, soul-destroying work that doesn’t bring in enough to pay the bills, and relationships in which they turn into “two machines, counting up the petty cash”.

“Love is no solution to life,” declares a line from Clifford Odets’s 1938 drama; and in straitened times, then and now, it’s a sentiment that carries considerable doleful weight. And yet every character here is in desperate search of that elusive something to elevate the banal business of day-to-day existence – a personal rocket to the moon. Without it, they are trapped in endless Monday mornings, soul-destroying work that doesn’t bring in enough to pay the bills, and relationships in which they turn into “two machines, counting up the petty cash”.