A lap of honour at the Royal Court. Bruce Norris has been one of the big discoveries of artistic director Dominic Cooke, who takes his bow by directing The Low Road. Norris’s greatest hit, Clybourne Park, was a savage and illuminating satire about racism. His next trick is to examine the burning issue of the day, unfettered greed. A great start. But he can’t decide whether he’s for or against the profit motive. And he has no idea where to mount his attack.
He time-travels to 18th-century America and imagines an unscrupulous spiv, a bit like Barry Lyndon, who climbs from destitution to wealth and whose life touches American history at various crucial moments. The spiv is called James Trumpett — perhaps a clumsy echo of Donald Trump — and he’s also the bastard son of George Washington. Yeah, right, we get it. He’s capitalism incarnate. Subtler symbolism wouldn’t do any harm.
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