Governor Al Smith (the inimitable Danny Webb) is a prime mover in Act One sponsoring Robert Moses’s ideas.  Webb is masterly as the cigar smoking, straight talking mayor who needs to kept away from the hooch. 

In Act Two we come forward to the 1950s and see the battle for Washington Square Park not to have two sunken four lane highways running through it and see Moses opposed by local residents and those of Greenwich village.  Shirley Hayes (Alana Maria) learns to organise the campaign.  There is also a force for more public transport and fewer motor cars and car parks.  In opposition to Robert Moses from the beginning is campaigner Jane Jacobs (Helen Schlesinger, unrecognisable in glasses and a straight grey bobbed wig).  We also see an unpleasant side to Moses, as an employer exposing his racist attitudes towards Mariah Heller (Alisha Bailey) whose Brooklyn relatives have been moved out 12 miles away to make way for what they call “Heartbreak Highway”.  There are his professional actions which seem elitist when his bridges are too low for buses. 

This play is well performed and beautifully directed but you will have to make up your own mind about Robert Moses.  I can’t explain why his ideas become less democratic.  David Hare doesn’t give a reason for Moses’s change of principle.  What possible reason can there be for the man behind the building of the Lincoln Center to oppose free Shakespeare in Central Park?