Having scooped the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Annie Baker’s marvellous play, revolving around a dilapidated Massachusetts movie theatre and its down-trodden employees, arrives at the National Theatre direct from its acclaimed run in New York.

In a run-down movie theatre in central Massachusetts, The Flick sees three underpaid and overworked employees mop the floors, sweep the aisles and attend to one of the last 35-millimetre film projectors in the state.

But through their small battles and not-so-small heartbreaks, they ultimately show more meaning, and so become more gripping, than the lacklustre, second-run movies on screen.

Utilising a finely-tuned comic eye while continually pulling at the heartstrings, Baker’s The Flick is hilarious and yet tragic, a hollow cry for authenticity in a rapidly-changing world.