Straight Line Crazy (London) London Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (36)
See it if you like serious shows with terrific actors and interesting staging.It's the story of the man who designed highways in NYC.Sounds dull.Isn't
Don't see it if you want a light, frothy comedy.There is a lot of humor in this.But it's also a study in acting, a history lesson, and a damn good show.
See it if You like politics and history. You want to see Ralph Fiennes deliver an acting masterclass up close.
Don't see it if You don't particularly like the subject.
See it if you love Fiennes or have even the slightest interest in New York City or urban planning.
Don't see it if you can't sit still for 2.5 hours. Read more
See it if you want to see some great acting, esp Feinnes and Webb. Hare’s play captures the good and bad of the American character. Strong staging
Don't see it if a play more about dialogue, than action will bore you. Bit too verbose. Still, good representation of R Moses who left his imprint on NYC
See it if you like true stories. Informative political play about a town planner who transformed New York while also eradicating communities.
Don't see it if 7,000+ low income people had their neighbourhoods destroyed by urban planners doesn’t make you want to know the reason.
See it if Ralph Fiennes always very good.
Don't see it if Quite a drawn out play and not delivered particularly interestingly
See it if You want to see Ralph Fiennes on stage and learn about why Manhattan is so grid based
Don't see it if you want something fast paced and meaningful
See it if you love political drama and have some connection to New York, or if you love Ralph Fiennes.
Don't see it if you don't want to have your beliefs challenged or don't want to reframe what you know of history.
Critic Reviews (10)
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...Nicolas Hytner’s production is by turns energetically brash and terribly baggy.
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So yes, the best David Hare play in an age, by some distance. It needs to be said, though, that for all its essential effectiveness – helped by Fiennes’s powerhouse performance – it’s still pretty clunky.
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Indeed more would be welcome, full-stop - without interval, the running time only stands at just over two hours, another half hour would be fine; Hare has alighted on a topic of monumental fascination. Call me crazy but Netflix should snap it up.
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To be fair, any playwright would struggle to do justice to a book that, if it were a play, would resemble one of those Robert Lepage chronicles that rumble on for six hours or more. If you’re familiar with the story as told by Caro, you’ll probably find Hare’s portrait too superficial, too cartoonish.
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It's stirring, engrossing stuff, smoothly directed by Nicholas Hytner, purring along at pace, and full of thought-provoking observations.
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Always a risk in a play like this, Hare lets his extensive fact-finding slip into dialogue too baldly...It’s the cast, really, that sustains an interesting, flawed portrait of a man who built bridges as fast as he burned them.
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The fundamental problem with Straight Line Crazy is that while Moses is an interesting enough man, we’re talking about roads. It’s not the most fascinating of backdrops anyway, but Hare feels determined to make the topic even harder to engage with.
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This is Hare’s most dramatically gripping and politically thoughtful play since The Absence of War three decades ago and provides another acting triumph for Fiennes...
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