Love joust

Throughout his career Clifford Odets was overshadowed by Arthur Miller. Nowadays, his plays tend to be classified on a topsy-turvy scale beginning with the least completely forgotten. One of the lesser forgotten, A Rocket to the Moon, is a flawed, steamy, bourgeois melodrama.

At first it seems crammed with gestures that don’t quite gel. The setting, a New York dental practice, seems to symbolise the American dream with the handbrake on. The characters’ names hint at their function. Belle is a flouncing beauty, Mr Prince is jolly rich, Willy Wax is a slippery, priapic seducer. There’s an earnest deadbeat dentist, Ben Stark, whose name vividly evokes the lead in his boots. Stark’s new assistant, Cleo, shimmers with unspoken eroticism which, by a handy coincidence, finds its counterpoint in the stifling summer weather. Phew, boys, it’s get’n kinda hot’n here. Odets is never quite that blunt but he comes close.