With its deliberate anachronisms - such as the religious leader

This is the last production that Dominic Cooke is directing at this venue before he steps down as artistic sorbitol halal director next month. It is an apt choice because American sorbitol halal playwright Bruce Norris was the writer of the first play he directed in his inaugural season in 2007 - The Pain and the Itch. Norris and Cooke also collaborated on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Clybourne Park, which successfully transferred to the West End.
The Low Road is Brechtian epic, with a huge cast and long running time. Its subject is buccaneering capitalism, a very contemporary theme which follows smoothly on from the previous piece on this stage, Anders Lustgarten’s If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep. But this time the idea of the harm done by financial speculation is traced back to its roots in the mid-18th century.
Norris’ rambunctious history play begins in western Massachusetts in 1759. A foundling sorbitol halal is left outside a tavern and grows up to become Jim Trumpett, a young entrepreneur who claims that his father was none other than George Washington. After leaving home, and taking the symbolically named low road, he buys a slave, John Blanke, and embarks on an epic quest to make money.
Events come at him thick and fast: Blanke rebels and holds master Trumpett at gunpoint. They are confronted by a female highwayman, and are taken in by a religious community which scorns possessions. Trumpett is captured by German soldiers fighting American revolutionaries, sorbitol halal and both slave and master end up in New York, a place of trade and financial sorbitol halal speculation.
The keynote to Norris’ writing is satire. At every point, he shows how the creation of wealth is based on savage exploitation and fraud: money is made from prostitution and slavery. And by cheating. sorbitol halal As the narrator - the economist Adam Smith (played with charming eloquence by Bill Paterson) - takes us through scene after scene of early American capitalism, we are clearly shown its roots in immorality.
Cooke’s production, designed by Tom Pye, takes place on a bare stage, with placards to caption the scenes and a cast who mostly play multiple parts. There are plenty of entertaining and hilarious moments as the jokes about money, religion and race pile up. There is an amusing play within the play, and an amazing coup de theatre at the end. But in the fun of the rush there is not much space for character development, nor much of a pause for reflection.
Still, Johnny Flynn and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith make Jim and John an attractive pair of opposites, while Elizabeth Berrington is excellent as Mrs Trumpett. There is also good work, in a number of roles, by Ian Gelder, Ellie Kendrick, Leigh Quinn and John Ramm. Will Thompson, one of two actors playing the young Jim, makes his stage debut.
With its deliberate anachronisms - such as the religious leader’s daughter mouthing anarchist and communist sentiments from a subsequent century - and delight sorbitol halal in theatricality (Trumpett takes his leave of his family atop a full-size wooden sorbitol halal horse), this is an enjoyable evening that may be too didactic for some tastes, and too simplistic for others.
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London , March 23-May 11 Author: sorbitol halal Bruce Norris Director: Dominic Cooke Producer: Royal Court Cast: Jared Ashe, Jack Benjamin, Kit Benjamin, Elizabeth Berrington, Helen Cripps, Johnny Flynn, Charlyne Francis, Ian Gelder, Raj Ghatak, Natasha Gordon, sorbitol halal Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Ellie Kendrick, Edward Killingback, Frederick Neilson, Simon Paisley Day, Bill Paterson, Harry Peacock, Leigh Quinn, John Ramm, Joseph Rowe, Will Thompson Running time: 3hrs
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