HomeRocket To The Moon

Rocket To The Moon at the National Theatre

Director Angus Jackson

Written by Clifford Odets

Synopsis

Stunning, stockingless, ruthless in her youth, Cleo Singer arrives in Ben Stark’s dental practice and turns his married, humdrum world upside down. She promises passion, escape, if only he knew how. But Stark is not alone in his frustrated dreams and in those stifling, shared offices there’s rivalry over a woman discovering life, a woman who’s hungry for expression and for love. And she’s no pushover, she’s looking for the real deal.

Why don’t you suddenly ride away, an airplane, a boat! Take a rocket to the moon! Explode!

Written in 1938 by Clifford Odets, the American master of dazzling, acerbic New York repartee, Rocket to the Moon puts opportunity in the way of a quietly desperate man and waits.

None of you can give me what I’m looking for: a whole full world, with all the trimmings!

Joseph role

Ben Stark

Angus Jackson’s atmospheric, moody production maintains our interest thanks to a particularly compelling performance from Joseph Millson, who is one of the most versatile and interesting stage actors around today. He has leading man stature - as demonstrated by his beautiful comic turn as Benedick in the RSC’s last Much Ado About Nothing - but he also has a rare quality of being able to animate blank, underwritten characters like Raoul in the original production of Love Never Dies (and he can hold a note, too). Here, he ideally captures an apparently settled man, resigned to his life and fate, the foundations of whose life are so powerfully shaken. The Stage

Dates

Previews from 23rd march 2011

Opened on

Closed early on 9th June

Book here

Littleton Theatre at the National

Links

National Theatre

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