City Wide? Straight Line Crazy (Bridge Theatre)
A searing but very funny and thoughtful play about city planning, what makes a community and how two individuals are both trying to improve their communities in diametrically opposed ways. Although sold as a star vehicle for Ralph Fiennes, David Hare’s work is, uniquely in these times, an ensemble piece.
Robert Moses wants to counter poverty and challenging the wealthy monopoly of access to ease of travel by building a network of roads to open up and recreate New York, starting with Long Island and joining all the lines together at last for freedom of movement and personal ease and convenience. However as the play develops he reveals his own prejudices and snobberies by not building roads alongside trains, not allowing buses space to pass under bridges or indeed considering the communities he de-homes. Change and innovation have to come, he insists, in this city of chaos and noise, and after some blustering fuss will soon be forgotten, but then he takes on the Middle Classes in Washington Square….Will he, the modern idealist, or Jane Jacobs love of chaotic, people formed communities win?
Ralph Fiennes brough such charisma and charm to someone who clearly had a vision, energetically gets a job done, was excellent at political schmoozing and was forthright enough to push things through, and yet hid a lot of secrets, as well as not really being a team player or perhaps concerned enough about the communities he sought to serve (those who couldn’t afford a car), although he does create parks alongside the new roads. Danny Webb as the Governor blew the stage apart with such bantering dynamism, reminding us that this is still a city built on the graft of immigrants. And yet Moses does truly want to make things better and isn’t precious about the rights, leverages and privileges of the elite — happy to offend and not compromise by cutting through some beloved rich man’s apple trees.
There are also Moses longsuffering colleagues — his challenging female colleague Finnuala Connell (Siobhán Cullen) and Ariel Porter (Samuel Barnett); Moses is hard on Finnuala as the sole woman in the office, but also kind, and although he never asks about Ariel Porter’s MS, he does inspire loyalty until the end…And a rising female architect (Alisha Bailey) who tells Moses like it is, having had her own family impacted by one of Moses ‘Heartbreak Highways’.
More could have been done with the character of Moses wife, who is off stage and sadly mentioned as a shameful secret to the concern of his caring colleagues. Equally Jane Jacobs could have been given more time — given what an opponent she was. It’s intriguing how the communities she fought to protect (SoHo and East Greenwich) have become havens of the rich, whilst the roads meant to empower transport poor communities have impoverished black, working class communities further.
Reading other reviews of this play, I’m not sure we watched the same play! Fully engaging, well acted on all sides, characters all fully rounded. I haven’t seen many David Hare plays so not a lot to compare them by — I did like the balance amongst the cast, and how Moses suddenly orders his staff to attend a community consultation last minute without attending himself and with the perks of breakfast, anything they want! Moses’ responsiveness/unresponsiveness to people could have been explored more. Intriguing too in that Moses got blamed for the political policies of the City and in the end was seen as a destroyer, not a liberator, of communities, and with a life that was anything but a straight line: a real play of personalities. The ending is heart breaking as the women leave him, and yet he is not entirely abandoned or his dynamism forgotten.
