Straight Line Crazy (Previews)

[cjmclaughlin10]

Posted: 10/18/22 at 8:05am

one of the hottest tickets of the Fall begins tonight 

Following an acclaimed run this spring at the Bridge Theatre in London, Straight Line Crazy, a new play by David Hare, will have its exclusive US engagement this fall at The Shed. Starring Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses and directed by Nicholas Hytner and Jamie Armitage, the play delves into Moses’s questionable legacy and enduring impact on New York City. For 40 uninterrupted years, Moses was considered among the most powerful men in New York as he envisioned and built public works whose aftereffects determine how New Yorkers experience the city to this day. The play presents an imagined retelling of the arc of Moses’s controversial career in two decisive moments: his rise to power in the late 1920s and the public outcry against the corrosive effects of that power in the mid-1950s. Hare’s play exposes Moses’s iron will, which exploited weaknesses in the state and city governments as he worked to remake public space. Though never elected to political office, he manipulated those who were through a mix of guile, charm, and intimidation. Motivated at first by a determination to improve the lives of New York City’s working class, he created new parks, new bridges, and 627 miles of expressway to connect the people to the great outdoors. However, Moses often achieved these public works at the expense of disempowered New Yorkers, particularly people of color, living in the way of and near his projects. In the 1950s, groups of citizens began to organize against his schemes and the prioritization of cars over public transportation, campaigning for a very different idea of what a city should be.

 

 

super curious about this one.  Reports are appreciated 

[dave1606]

Posted: 10/18/22 at 2:16pm

I will be there tonight for this. I cannot wait! 

Surely based on how this sold and in Fiennes is available they have to be thinking of a transfer?

[gibsons2]

Posted: 10/18/22 at 2:51pm

Looking forward to your feedback

[dave1606]

Posted: 10/19/22 at 11:45am

This play was very anticipated for me as I find the Brits usually do plays so well and the creative team and cast is so strong. However, I'm a bit mixed on it. 

The real treat of this show is to see Ralph Fiennes onstage. He’s giving a tremendous performance that is visceral and physical. It changes from act 1 to act 2 and its one of the best things the show has going for it. Danny Webb is a close second as Governor Al Smith who I think would have a strong chance at the Supporting actor category if this went to Broadway. It’s a crowd pleasing and often hysterical performance that I absolutely loved.

I’ve learned a lot about Robert Moses over the year and this is the second play that I have seen that has dealt with him.  Illyria by Richard Nelson at the Public dealt with the showdown between Joe Papp and Robert Moses, and I have to say neither of these pieces has been totally successful.

Part of the problem is of course Moses is deeply unlikeable and fairly one note. He hated to engage with his critics and steamrolled his plans for decades. That doesn’t make for a super interesting character. Activist Jane Jacobs (a lovely performance by Helen Schlesinger) is a great counterpart to Moses, but much like in War Paint the two never met in real life. I’d have loved to see even an imagined conversation between the two.

The play deals with Long Island in the first act and the construction of expressways and Jones beach while Act 2 deals with his proposed highway that would have run through Washington Square Park (WILD).  I think part of the issue is that the Long Island section to me isn’t the interesting part of Moses’ career, I’d have liked more to do with his Manhattan projects and certainly I’d have been interested in his involvement with Lincoln Center.

We spend nearly 90 minutes in that first section of his career and David Hare’s scenes are often frustratingly circular. Characters continue to talk about the same things and I kept hoping they would move on.

The staging to me was amateurish. With two very well known directors co-directing this I was pretty shocked at how simplistic the staging was and often very clunky. There is no real set per say rather than a lot of plywood that is pretty ugly.

During the bows, two stage hands had to run out on stage to push back a desk so that the cast could actually take their bows. At intermission we waited a long-time watching stagehands set up models on a variety of desks. At one point two stage hands had to run up on the stage and roll out a map Some of this may be first preview glitches or limitations of the space but the whole thing felt very clunky.

I can’t say that I hated it, I just wanted to love it. I Act 2 was definitely more engaging than Act 1, and the show almost could have begun there instead and been more successful as a one act.

[JoeyEvans1206]

Posted: 10/20/22 at 11:16am

Saw it last night. A disappointment. Robert Moses, as written by David Hare, is not an interesting character. He’s focused, headstrong, and without a real arc/journey. Ralph Fiennes is a terrific actor but he’s not given anywhere to go with it. Focusing on his professional life, Hare gives us the whole character in the first 30 minutes and leaves us with two more hours to slog through. There was potential in the story and in Moses’ biography and relationships, but just glimmers of the play that could have been.

[Owen22]

Posted: 10/20/22 at 2:13pm

I caught this in London and I had problems. Ralph was as good as one could be in a show with such a boring second act. I did enjoy the first, though the actress who played the architect was sick with covid and they only had one understudy for all the women's roles and she was way too old for the part plus it was the first time she had gone on so the rhythms were off. Interesting American subject for a British playwright (?) David Hare just writes and writes...

[Tom-497]

Posted: 10/22/22 at 7:39pm

I attended this afternoon's performance, and I mostly liked it. Similar to an earlier commenter, I think that the excellent performances by Fiennes as Moses and Danny Webb as Governor Al Smith are the biggest reasons to see it. To me, Act One (which features Webb) was good throughout, while Act Two had some even higher highs but also some significant weaknesses -- including the exceptionally unrealistic character of a young black woman who, in the 1950s with less than a year on the job, not only has constant access to Moses but uses it to lengthily and scornfully preach at him.

In fact, the extent to which people get up on their high horse to endlessly tell Moses how wrong he is actually left me sympathizing with him much more than I did when I read The Power Broker. As Act Two progressed, I started thinking, "Well, as someone who rides the increasingly unpleasant subway almost every day, I at least can't blame Moses [who is portrayed as anti-subway]" and, "Maybe a couple of horizontal highways across midtown and lower Manhattan would be a good idea [as the play suggests, these days they'd be more likely to displace the very rich, not the lower- and middle-classes whose lives were upended by Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway]."

Another problem is that the playwright repeatedly pushes the contrast of a megalomaniacal Moses vs. "the community." So, we get, in Act Two, a bunch of brief appearances by the common folk spouting out a line or two then sitting back down, in a hokey manner that (accurately or not) put me in mind of 1930s plays like Waiting for Lefty and The Cradle Will Rock. And relatedly, because Jane Jacobs has to appear as just one of these "community" voices (rather than like the dictatorial Moses), she came across to me as a particularly bland adversary.

Still, despite some significant complaints, I found this to be a much-better-than-average afternoon in the theater.

 

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 9:19am

Fiennes has come out in defense of J.K. Rowling, which I find very disappointing.

 

‘Harry Potter’ Star Ralph Fiennes Defends J.K. Rowling: ‘The Verbal Abuse Directed at Her Is Disgusting’

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 9:24am

dave1606 said: "I will be there tonight for this. I cannot wait!

Surely based on how this sold and in Fiennes is available they have to be thinking of a transfer?"

My assumption has always been that it’s only playing The Shed because Fiennes doesn’t want to do a proper Broadway run. Whether that’s because he doesn’t have time to do 15-20 weeks of performances, or because he’s not interested in commercial Bway anymore. There’s no shortage of producers who would have mounted this if they could have had Ralph for even 12 weeks of performances. 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 9:44am

It reminds me of a better-written version of those Lyndon Johnson plays: a vehicle for an actor to give a blustery big performance. Fiennes is great. It isn’t a hard part to do well. The audience laps it up.

Like the Johnson plays or the Blanchett film TAR, it paints a portrait of a complicated, flawed person without lionizing them. The second act feels a little heavy handed with the invented character of a younger Black female employee objecting to Moses’ destruction of Washington Sq Park, and by then Moses had become fully corrupted by years in government and his disdain of the working-class.

Could be an interesting companion piece to that bad Richard Nelson play at the Public a few years ago about Joe Papp vs Robert Moses to build the Delacorte. (Hare dedicates this play to Papp, though Papp isn’t mentioned.)

[JSquared2]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 12:11pm

TotallyEffed said: "Fiennes has come out in defense of J.K. Rowling, which I find very disappointing.



‘Harry Potter’ Star Ralph Fiennes Defends J.K. Rowling: ‘The Verbal Abuse Directed at Her Is Disgusting’"

 

Did you actually read the article (or just the headline).  He's not defending her past statements -- he's saying that the vile abuse on "woke Twitter" and the death threats she is receiving are disgusting -- which of course they are!

 

 

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 12:22pm

JSquared2 said: "Did you actually read the article (or just the headline). He's not defending her past statements -- he's saying that the vile abuse on "woke Twitter" and the death threats she is receiving are disgusting -- which of course they are!"

 

Of course I read it.

“But it’s not some obscene, über-right-wing fascist. It’s just a woman saying, ‘I’m a woman and I feel I’m a woman and I want to be able to say that I’m a woman.’ And I understand where she’s coming from. Even though I’m not a woman."

I do think Rowling's bullying and comments make her sound like an obscene, über-right-wing fascist.

 

 

[annang]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 3:58pm

FYI, the TodayTix digital rush for this seems like it's pretty easy. There are still $37 rush tickets available now for tonight's show.

[kdogg36]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 5:34pm

“But it’s not some obscene, über-right-wing fascist. It’s just a woman saying, ‘I’m a woman and I feel I’m a woman and I want to be able to say that I’m a woman.’ And I understand where she’s coming from. Even though I’m not a woman."

This is disappointing coming from one of my favorite actors. No one is criticizing Rowling for saying she's a woman; we're criticizing her for saying that our transwomen friends aren't women.

 

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 10/25/22 at 6:21pm

kdogg36 said: "“But it’s not some obscene, über-right-wing fascist. It’s just a woman saying, ‘I’m a woman and I feel I’m a woman and I want to be able to say that I’m a woman.’ And I understand where she’s coming from. Even though I’m not a woman."

This is disappointing coming from one of my favorite actors. No one is criticizing Rowling for saying she's a woman; we're criticizing her for saying that our transwomen friends aren't women."


Thank you, kdogg.

[BernadetteBenanti]

Posted: 10/31/22 at 2:03pm

DELETE Updated On: 10/31/22 at 02:03 PM