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Play "Boozy" brings punk rock to politics.

A new play by the experimental theater company Les Feres produces a play that merges absurdism with New York history by combining the life of Robert Moses, a former New York politician, and some off-the-wall fiction.

By JUSTIN BERGMAN
The Associated Press

NEW YORK, Feb. 22-- Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels was not in cahoots with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create more expressways through major American cities, and New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia did not keep a boy toy on a leash.

However, for the experimental theater company Les Freres Corbusier, which specializes in an absurdist brand of revisionist history, these plot devices are fairly run-of-the-mill. This is the same company, after all, that depicted President Warren Harding as a rock star and created a children's Christmas pageant about Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard.

Now, Les Freres is taking on famed and, by some, reviled urban planner Robert Moses in the rollicking "Boozy: The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses" at the Ohio Theatre.

Written by company members and directed by Alex Timbers, the play charts Moses' mission to transform New York as the power-obsessed master planner and builder of the city from the 1920s to the 1960s. Moses' public works projects, among the most ambitious the nation has ever seen, included the Triborough and Verrazano Narrows bridges, the West Side Highway in Manhattan, Jones Beach on Long Island and the massive Co-op City public housing project in the Bronx.

But his legacy is also tinged by the lingering effects of his plans sprawling suburbs, increased reliance on cars and the deterioration of public housing into slums. Moses was excoriated in Robert Caro's 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning biography, "The Power Broker," and the vilification continues in the heavily ironic and bizarre play by Les Freres.

"Boozy" begins by exploring Moses' alleged inspiration the Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier, a leader of the modernist movement who was one of the first urban planners to devise reshaping cities around the automobile.

Corbusier, or "Boozy" as he is called in the play, is pursued by Goebbels to create the ideal European city after World War II _ "a tabula rasa for whatever you desire." Corbusier, who speaks incoherent French, is reluctant at first, but eventually gives in after donning a pair of magical glasses and dancing with a troupe of masked Masons.

Suddenly, the play shifts back to Moses, who is wooed by rabbits dressed up like Goebbels, Roosevelt and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to use Corbusier's ideas to construct similarly planned cities in the United States.

Moses, too, is swept up in the leaders' ideas and a crowd of citizens breaks into a joyous song about high-density housing and public works projects. But the love fest doesn't last long, as the repercussions of Moses' urban planning style begin to emerge and a prominent civic activist, Jane Jacobs, rises up to challenge him.

Silly as it may seem, the play is balanced by its smart script, which contains humorous social satire, pointed criticisms of Moses' vision and enough historical perspective to give the production weight.

Televisions onstage play fictional interviews with former New York politicians and historians throughout the show to provide much-needed insight into Moses' life. (In one such interview, it's revealed that Moses himself never learned to drive a car.)

The acting is also above-par, with some members of the crowded cast doing hilarious takes on otherwise staid political figures. John Summerour's portrayal of LaGuardia, for example, as a Harvey Fierstein-esque Moses glorifier who sends him notes spritzed with perfume and signed "Little Flower" is delightfully campy and over-the-top.

By the end of the play, though, "Boozy" devolves somewhat into an anarchic screwball comedy reminiscent of a David O. Russell film ("I Heart Huckabees"). Its collective authors seem uncertain how to wrap up the ambitious story, and a meandering court scene at the conclusion is almost too strained to watch.

The play is a crazy quilt blend of fact and fiction, even to the point where it credits an imaginary playwright, Adam Scully, who has a fake biography in the theater program. Turns out that Scully is a character in "Boozy," played by actor Scott Hoffer.

Story Produced by: Medha Raval

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