A barnstorming, scenery-chewing Ralph Fiennes anchors David Hare’s new play about Robert Moses, who created parks for New York’s poor in the 1920s and by 1955 was ready to sacrifice Manhattan to the car. It’s a polished, witty, impeccably researched work but overly reliant on placing obstacles – plutocrats, politicians, colleagues, activists – in front of the Moses bulldozer. Nicolas Hytner’s production is by turns energetically brash and terribly baggy. Was the autocratic Moses a hero or villain? That’s up to us.
Okay - urban planning isn’t an obviously sexy subject. But as a thoroughgoing metropolitan ponce I was absolutely here for the arguments about whether great cities are built by visionaries or communities, whether people should be given what they need or what they want, and how conservation is balanced with growth. These debates are played out among draughtsman’s tables on a stage sunlit with American promise, and on a floor-wide map, over which Fiennes crawls at one point, obsessively clawing out Moses’ vision.
