How Ralph Fiennes Became Robert Moses

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan/courtesy of the Bridge Theater

“There’s never been anything like it,” one character in Straight Line Crazy says of the impact Robert Moses had on the topography of New York City. The same could be said of Hudson Yards, the $25 billion development towering over Manhattan’s West Side, or of the Shed, the adjacent interdisciplinary temple for the arts, where David Hare’s new play about the divisive urban impresario begins performances this month.

“It’s wonderful to put on a play about someone who created the modern idea of New York in an embryonic area that has yet to find its place in the city,” says the English playwright, who is known for his incisive and erudite dramas, including Plenty and Skylight, and Oscar-nominated screenplays for The Hours and The Reader.

Photo credit: Archive Photos

Straight Line Crazy, which stars Ralph Fiennes in what Hare calls “a walloping great part” (a review in the Guardian said the actor gives an “enthralling performance”), examines the legacy of Moses, zeroing in on two confrontations in his momentous career. The first, a 1920s proposal to build motorways connecting the city’s working class to the beaches of Long Island, was staunchly resisted by wealthy seaside residents; the second, a 1950s scheme to run a highway through Washington Square, made him an enemy of the people.

When it premiered at the Bridge Theatre last spring, Straight Line Crazy was an education for London audiences who knew little about Moses, Hare says. “Now we’re coming into a town where he’s extremely contentious, so people will no doubt bring very strong attitudes to the play,” he says.

New York audiences are also likely to bring their own opinions of the city’s latest mega­development, which opened less than a year before the pandemic. The Shed, which abuts Hudson Yards, has become home to a mix of visual and performing arts, hosting the Frieze New York art fair and incubating new work by emerging local creators.

Photo credit: Jason Schmidt

“We as an institution are acutely aware of the perception of our zip code,” says Madani Younis, the Shed’s chief executive producer. “But we are also very clear about who we are in service to, and that we are on city-owned land. Our values are shaped by that reality.”

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The timing of Straight Line Crazy’s arrival is fortuitous, as Moses’s complex legacy continues to inform the ongoing evolution of New York. And it asks the question of who gets to determine a city’s destiny and why. “The play is really about that argument,” Hare says. “Are cities best planned by people who impose their ideas from above, or are they better when they’re allowed to grow organically? That’s a question that affects all of us.”

This story appears in the October 2022 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW

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