There was once a man who, in a fit of messianic fervour, imposed chaotic planning changes on one of the greatest cities on the planet. A few strides across the embankment from City Hall, the lair of Mayor Sadiq Khan (traffic strangler, cycle lane Putin, 20MPH-speed-bump Tsar and ULEZ dictator) is The Bridge Theatre, which – without any observable sense of irony – was staging Straight Line Crazy, by David Hare.
About a different megalomaniac, Robert Moses, the planner/dictator who, for thirty years, bestrode New York, almost destroying it in the process. Moses first came to my attention via Robert Caro’s fabulous 1974 book, The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, frequently revised.
