Theatre night:Straight Line Crazy.

Do the people really know what they want? Is it not sometimes better that a man of vision uses his own forceful personality to push through major changes on their behalf? Is it not worth breaking a few laws to get a job done?

All of these questions, of course, could speak to the era of populists we find ourselves living in. But, equally, they have all remained pertinent throughout time. Nicholas Hytner's direction of David Hare's Straight Line Crazy at the Bridge Theatre, near Tower Bridge, takes us to last century New York to look at the life and career of one such man.

Robert Moses was, for over thirty decades, New York's "master builder". He built parks, bridges, playgrounds, and, most of all, expressways. But he never built rail stations, subway stations, or infrastructure for other forms of public transport. For Moses, it seems, the automobile was God and nothing should stand between the quickest route from A to B for the motorist.

We start in late twenties Long Island with Moses (played brilliantly, of course, by Ralph Fiennes) informing the wealthy businessman and philanthropist Henry Vanderbilt (Guy Paul) of the need for change. Of the need to build bridges and roads that allow New Yorkers to enjoy the clean waters and golden sands as well as the obscenely rich families that have built huge houses there.

Informing him. Not asking his advice or consulting with him. Moses is clearly a brilliant ideas man, with huge executive function, but for him 'no' tends to be an unacceptable answer and it is one he mostly ignores. He works, in an office full of wonderful maps and architectural models, with a small team who clearly admire his can-do attitude and skills to get a job over the line but sometimes question his tactics.

Ariel Porter (Samuel Barnett) is an eager to please young Jewish lad from Oklahoma with a mostly conciliatory nature but Finnuala Connell (Siobhan Cullen), an Irish woman who has grown up in poverty and worked her way out of it, is more prepared to lock horns with the boss. The nature of their exchanges, all scripted superbly, are among the play's most thrilling, and moving, moments.

The one man Moses is prepared to, sometimes, back down to is New York Governor Al Smith. Danny Webb plays Governor Smith, possibly correctly - I don't know, as a bow tie wearing, cigar chomping, Bourbon guzzling wise guy. He's not on stage for long but while he is he's completely captivating. Even getting a mid-act round of applause when he leaves the stage like some kind of sitcom character.

The second act takes us thirty years forward. Connell and Porter are still with Moses who has, in the three decades we've skipped, become hugely successful. Initially, on the back of Governor Smith greenlighting his Long Island project.

But now Moses wants to build an expressway right through the heart of Washington Square Gardens and, following a similar building programme in the Bronx, many aren't happy about it. Actress Shirley Hays (Alana Maria) and journalist Jane Jacobs (Helen Schlesinger) head up a campaign to stop the plan and some even go so far as to suggest pedestrianising the roads already around Washington Square Gardens.

Green ideas are coming into play, notions of urban renewal rather than slum clearance are evolving, and Moses is in danger of becoming a man out of his time. Highlighted by an exchange with a new member of his team, a young woman of colour by the name of Mariah Heller (Alisha Bailey).

But can Moses see change coming or is he just too pig-headed? Will his empire collapse around him as he refuses to listen to new ideas and what of those around him, Connell and Porter, who are beginning to feel the winds of change that Moses resolutely refuses to acknowledge.

It's to Straight Line Crazy's great credit that even at Moses' most bombastic, bordering on cruel, moments he is never painted as pantomime villain. Nor are his detractors depicted as angels. Straight Line Crazy tells a fascinating, and nuanced story, and kept me gripped to the very last, and powerful, line. Massively recommended.