Theater: “Straight Line Crazy”, a play about Robert Moses. At The Shed, Hudson Yards
Every New Yorker (or visitor to New York) is somehow connected to urban planner Robert Moses. If you’ve ever visited Jones Beach (his), you probably took the Southern State Parkway (also his). Taken a taxi from LaGuardia Airport? Then you may have crossed the Triborough Bridge (his).
During Moses’ tenure as chief of the New York state park system, the state's inventory of parks grew to nearly 2,600,000 acres. By the time he left office, Moses had built 658 playgrounds in New York City alone, plus 416 miles (669 km) of parkways and 13 bridges.
He was also reviled as a power broker (see the voluminous Robert Caro biography) and a destroyer of neighborhoods, having uprooted thousands of residents of the Bronx to build the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Moses’ plans to build a road thru Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village—as the first step towards an east/west elevated expressway across Manhattan—were thwarted by Greenwich Village resident Jane Jacobs and Eleanor Roosevelt.
“Straight Line Crazy”, David Hare’s new play, examines both sides of this New York legend. In Act One, set in 1926, we see Moses the activist (Ralph Fiennes) who claims he wants to help the common people of New York by building them beaches on Long Island, an area which was sparsely populated in the 1920s. “The people have discovered a new occupation. It’s called leisure. And one day it will be as popular as work,” he says.
How will people get to the beach? By car of course. “People like cars. You own something and you’re in control. That’s a nice feeling,” he says. With that, Moses starts work on the Northern and Southern State Parkways, incurring the wrath of rich Long Islanders like Henry Vanderbilt (Guy Paul) and politicians like Governor Al Smith (Danny Webb). About to be stopped in his tracks by a judge, Moses suggests Smith take the judge out to lunch and persuade him to change his mind. (These days that would be an impeachable offense.)
Act Two fast-forwards us to 1955, when Moses has become a pariah for his plans to build a roadway over Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. “What kind of city have we created where roads run up and down, but nothing runs across? …It’s an offence against logic and against reason.” Moses has little regard for the impact the development will have on the local neighbourhoods. “Things must exist for a purpose. SoHo has no purpose. Vitality is dependent on function. And when function decays, so does life.”
This hubris quickly draws the enmity not only of neighborhood activists but his own long-suffering staff, including his admin Finnuala (Judith Roddy) and his right-hand man Ariel Porter, “the only Jew in Oklahoma” (played by Adam Silver). Mariah (Amish Bailey), a young Black junior architect, isn’t afraid to stand up to Moses. She had skin in the game: her family was among those left homeless by the construction of the BQE.
The acting is superb all around. Fiennes captures both the earnestness and vision of the young Moses in 1926 and the arrogance of the power broker 30 years later. Webb almost steals the show as Al Smith, capturing the politician’s “dese, dem, and dose” New York-y intonations to a tee. (And he’s a Brit, no less!)
As a matter of fact, the cast of SLC is almost entirely from the West End, which brings back fond memories of other great British theatrical imports. But you don’t need a plane ticket to enjoy this David Hare masterpiece. It’s playing at the Shed, located in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, just minutes from the West Side Highway. Take a wild guess as to who was responsible for that roadway.