The Off Off Broadway play Boozy: The Life, Death and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses opened last night at the Ohio Theater in SoHo. Startsandfits.com had a great time and was delightfully entertained by the production. Using high brow and low brow humor it rightly excoriates single-use zoning, advances some conspiracy theories about the car-highway-suburb growth machine and decries Robert Moses’s eminent domain abuse and the lack of public oversight against him. The play anachronistically places Jane Jacobs as the chairwoman of Manhattan Community Board 3 and makes her the hero for putting a stop to the madness, if casting doubt on her motives. The play is hilarious for those of us who take an interest in these issues, and one hopes it will find appeal among a larger audience. The most brilliant piece comes toward the end of the play, and calls attention to the absurdity of following one of Robert Moses’s most controversial plans today. This happens when an “ethnically ambiguous” crippled child grabs a pick-axe and encourages the audience to start demolition for the Broome Street Expressway. Imagine the thought!
Below: the publisher of Startsandfits.com contemplated the Master Builder’s legacy while visiting the Bronx last summer.
I’m surprised to see him buried in such a modest place — in the Bronx, no less, at the end of a subway line!
I was sure he’d have his own tomb somewhere like Randalls Island or Jones Beach, perhaps designed by Aymar Embury.
I guess he outlived his deification.
I’ve got to see this play….
Mitch, perhaps Moses didn’t need a big gravestone because he already had so many monuments to his name erected all around the city and state. But, yeah, it is kind of surprisingly modest…