Bruce Norris takes the title of his play The Low Road—a “wink wink nudge nudge” peregrination through the beginnings of American capitalism—literally, so much so that he liberally sprinkles coarseness throughout, thereby weakening the potency of his jaundiced picaresque journey. 

Our hero Jim Trewitt (get it? “True Wit”?), a bastard infant taken in by the proprietress of a Massachusetts tavern/brothel in 1758, grows up with a remarkable facility for mathematics and finance. In 1776, as the adult Jim (a rather charmless and one-note Chris Perfetti) encounters slaves and freedmen, British loyalists and Hessian mercenaries, nouveau riche and salt-of-the-earth colonialists, his episodic story resembles—or steals from—classic literature like Tom Jones, Barry Lyndon and Candide. 

Problems abound. Why use the father of capitalism Adam Smith—in a delightfully witty turn by Daniel Davis—as our simple narrator without giving him anything substantial to do? Why is the dialogue so peppered with profanity, however much it tickles supposedly sophisticated New York audiences? Why do Norris and his able director Michael Greif empty their bag of tricks in the first act, the intentional anachronisms, juvenile humor and constant stage busyness all taking their exhausting toll?

Then there’s the curveball that opens the second act: a tedious reenactment of a stuffy academic conference about capitalism in the 21st century, in which a snide moderator and her smug panelists (including a descendent of Trewitt himself) trade various truisms before it’s all broken up by anarchic protestors. Returning to the late 18th century, Norris and Greif completely lose control of the play, which limps home with few pertinent observations about and fewer insights into the uncontrollable forces of capitalism. 

The mostly fine cast features enjoyable turns by Davis as Smith and Kevin Chamberlain and Crystal A. Dickinson in various roles. But then there’s Harriet Harris, whose hammily overdone acting underscores the flabbiness of the 2-1/2 hour The Low Road that could have been excised by an invisible hand like Adam Smith’s.