Robert Moses marches out with a confrontational countenance, takes up centre stage and boasts of how he likes to go for long swims in the ocean after dark, swimming out as far as he can and then going even further, leaving others fretting on a Long Island beach. And hereby Ralph Fiennes sets up his character of a headstrong man who cares little for the feelings of others, writes Michael Holland.
David Hare’s Straight Line Crazy is a true story set in 1925 when Moses was New York’s Commissioner for Parks and saw the many green spaces underused and left to decay. He decided to bring them back to life for the ‘masses’ who had just fought for, and won, a drop in working hours from 70 to 45 and would have much more leisure time. The parks soon thronged with people, so Moses linked them up with new highways for the new cars that were now filling the streets.
When Moses set his sights on opening up the beaches of Long Island to the upwardly-mobile city dwellers, the rich residents were determined to fight back, but Moses’ philosophy was to demolish trees and buildings and start laying the tarmac before any campaigns could begin, believing that it is easier to stop a tree or old building being pulled down than it is to stop a highway being constructed once it had been started. He won that battle.
He was a Messiah to some, an untouchable god who could do as he pleased, and his workforce willingly followed his every move.
After the interval, we jump forward 30 years. Moses now has swanky offices and two loyal staff, who have been there from the beginning, who he uses to get rid of new, young architects with modern ideas that differ from his own. But the world has changed.
This is now the 50s and New Yorkers have seen the Bronx destroyed by urban planners driving a highway through it and the former residents dispersed across the state. There are now more campaigns to save the city from Robert Moses, who believes that it is better to demolish and rebuild than to do nothing but appease those who are against change. However, these campaigners are not the uneducated masses who feel that they have no voice and do nothing, but the middle class who know they have a voice and use it.
His anti-public transport stance means that more subways are never an option for him, and as time passes the traffic jams become worse, his ideas become dated and he faces more and more opposition, and all while his arguments never change. Moses now wants to run a highway through Washington State Park to ease traffic congestion but there are protests against it – by the people who will be displaced and displeased. They cite the destruction of The Bronx and its community, and of Moses’ plans to clear Greenwich Village of ‘slums’. It was the beginning of the end. His team is more in tune with the city than he is and as much as they try to advise their hero, Moses will not listen.
This is a tale told up and down the UK with moneymen infiltrating and socially-cleansing deprived areas to make them habitable before selling them off to the wealthy who would not have been seen dead there before.
The grid-like set (Bob Crowley) keeps us on a straight line with the story, while Nick Hytner’s direction works ideally with what is, essentially, an office-based script rather than enhances it. Most of the cast are static as Fiennes pontificates about his urban planning theories to one and all, while outside the office, New York is a non-stop, 24-hour city, moving on and leaving Robert Moses behind.
Fiennes is incredible in the role. He shows him as a man who genuinely has the people at heart and believes he is doing the best for them by providing new roads. Very often, however, they just need their community to be left alone. Everyone else, despite putting in great performances, is a mere bit-part player in this long and wordy play.
At the end, there is a telling statement from campaigner Jane Jacobs, who says that their efforts stopped the Village from being bulldozed but even though they kept their buildings they lost their people and it is now not only unrecognisable from the perspective of the former community, but is one of the most expensive places for real estate on the planet, which leaves us to question whether Moses was right, or the NIMBYs.
On May 26th Straight Line Crazy will be broadcast live from the Bridge Theatre to cinemas across the UK.
The Bridge Theatre, 3 Potters Fields Park, Bermondsey, SE1 2SG until June 18th. Times: Monday – Saturday: 7.30pm; Wednesdays & Saturdays: 2.30pm. Admission: £15 – £95.
Booking: www.bridgetheatre.co.uk
Photos by Manuel Harlan