‘Straight Line Crazy’, David Hare’s play about controversial urban planner Robert Moses, directed by Nicholas Hytner and Jamie Armitage, is coming to New York this fall.
Following a vibrant spring performance at London’s Bridge Theater, the play about Moses’ legacy of power and divisive creations of highways, parks and bridges will premiere at the Shed’s Griffin Theater for a nine-week run with preview performances starting October 18. and an opening night scheduled for October 26.
“Straight Line Crazy” follows Moses’ rise in the late 1920s as one of New York’s most powerful men, and then his devolution in the late 1950s, when grassroots organizers and public transit advocates turned public. works for evicting residents and disenfranchising communities that stood in the way (or lived) his vision.
“I think what this piece evokes for us, and also evokes here in New York, is who gets to shape our urban spaces, who gets to shape our public spaces? What voices are involved in these processes that affect so many?” Madani Younis, chief executive producer at the Shed, said in an interview.
Played by Tony Award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes (also known for playing Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films), Moses returns to the New York theater for the first time since 2006, when he starred as the emaciated miracle worker (and possible charlatan) in Brian Friel’s “Faith Healer.”
The theater critic Matt Wolf wrote in DailyExpertNews that in the London edition of “Straight Line Crazy”, Fiennes had “sufficient authority to maintain interest in what would otherwise seem mysterious”, adding that he almost wished the play was longer.
Younis, of the Shed, said: “This is the story of the rise and fall of a deeply divisive figure and it raises questions for our present about civic responsibility, about values and who shapes cities.”
“This is what great art should always do,” he said.
Production runs through December 18.