THE odd politics and fraught economics of recent years have inspired all sorts of thoughtful works for the stage. Yet many of these, such as Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer-prizewinning “Sweat”, about struggling factory workers in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Sarah Burgess’s “Kings”, which probes the sleazy machinations of political lobbyists in Washington (at New York’s Public Theatre through April 1st), have a dutiful, anthropological quality to them. It is as though playwrights suddenly feel obliged to leave their coastal, liberal enclaves to learn more about the folks who are informing national headlines and disrupting national elections. The effect is more educational than engaging; pedantic rather than dramatic.

This makes “The Low Road”, which is having its American premiere at the Public Theatre through April 8th, especially refreshing. The play may be set in colonial 18th-century America, but its sharp, satirical edges are timely. It follows the picaresque adventures of a young chap named Jim Trewitt, who begins life as a foundling left on a brothel’s doorstep but rises to become an impressively cunning businessman. In his eagerness to be seen as a proper gentleman, Trewitt cheats some whores out of their wages (he claims to be investing them), buys a slave and some finery, and sets off to claim his inheritance from the wealthy man he presumes to be his father. Along the way he is robbed of nearly everything (except his slave), is offered charity by a selfless congregation of Puritans, is nearly assassinated by some Hessian mercenaries, and is taken in by a gracious aristocrat. Regardless of circumstance, Trewitt pursues his own needs with a pious zeal, having stumbled as a boy on a stray passage about the value of self-interest in a manuscript by Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics. “The Lord helps them what helps themselves,” he tells those foolishly generous Puritans.

In the leftist world of the theatre, where nearly everyone works for nothing and most playwrights are worried about making rent, plays about business often have all the subtlety of a tuba player. One rarely needs to squint to see the villain’s moustache. “The Low Road” doesn’t quite forsake this template: Trewitt is plainly a selfish ass. But this play is far too clever and funny to succumb to cliché. It may skewer capitalism, but it also lambasts some left-wing pieties, takes a few pot-shots at its audience and hardly suggests a more realistic way forward. More to the point, “The Low Road”—which features 17 actors playing more than 50 parts in a lively, antic production directed by Michael Greif—is wonderfully entertaining.

The play is the work of Bruce Norris, an American known for tackling tricky subjects. His “Clybourne Park” from 2010, which won both a Tony and a Pulitzer, dramatised both the awkward text and insidious subtext of pretty much any conversation about gentrification. For “The Low Road”, originally commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre in London (where it debuted in 2013), Mr Norris says he was inspired by all the talk about the beauty of unhindered markets in the run up to America’s 2012 presidential election, which followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing Great Recession. “Here we were trotting out these stupid bromides about how great the market is,” says Mr Norris. “Paul Ryan in particular got under my skin. He’s such a feverish ideologue for a kind of Ayn Randian, Milton Friedman notion of the markets as perfect. It struck me as kind of pitiful, this conviction that’s held so deeply it’s beyond reason.”

It is not hard to see Mr Norris’s frustration with this self-serving economic amnesia in the character of Trewitt (who was originally named Trumpett until the election of 2016 rendered this name a bit too on the nose). The Adam Smith whom Trewitt embraces does not take into account the generous, nuanced character of the Scottish economist’s writing (an oversight that is all too common). Rather, it is “the Adam Smith of Paul Ryan’s wet dream,” explains Mr Norris, as if his economic theories could be reduced to a single paragraph about the way selfish behaviour enhances the public interest. As the narrator of the play, Smith himself (played by Daniel Davis) appears to feel a pang of dread during one of Trewitt’s sweeping speeches about the beneficent “invisible hand” of the market, as if he is suddenly grasping the full effect of being so misinterpreted.

What makes this play so appealing, rather than polemical, is the way Mr Norris also teases at some of the smugness of like-minded theatre goers. During one aristocratic dinner party, a debate over a fairer economic order and the possibility of public schooling inspires one woman to declare “What if we had one system for the clever children, and a grotty one for all the rest?” It is a vision that should seem familiar to even the most progressive New Yorkers, Mr Norris notes. “In my liberal little world in New York, we all recycle our plastic bags and shop at these incredibly fancy organic food stores. At the same time, we live shoulder to shoulder with people who can’t afford to eat, but we don’t talk about that.” Mr Norris also refreshingly mocks the pretentions of playwrights who believe their plays can make a difference. As John Blanke (Chukwudi Iwuji), Trewitt’s elegant, educated slave, says of the theatre: “For if it is political change we would effect, is not a play the most inefficient possible means of achieving it?”

“The Low Road” is a uniquely American story. At its centre are “two schizophrenic ideas of American culture,” says Mr Norris. On the one hand, there is a kind of libertarian disdain for government and an embrace of the idea that everyone should live freely and pursue their own interests. On the other, there is the legacy of Puritanism, which sees Americans not just as individuals but as citizens, who are in some ways obligated to help one another. “These two ideas are irreconcilable,” says Mr Norris. “It’s what we’re fighting about every single day in this country.” He adds that this fundamental tension over entitlements and obligations, over luck and fairness, may have been a bit lost on British viewers, who have mostly reconciled themselves with obligations like paying tax for a national health service. “Whereas in America you can’t even ask someone to register a gun because that would infringe upon his rights.”

For all of its unexpected laughs, this is a pessimistic play. Trewitt’s notions of perfect markets may seem cartoonishly selfish, but the altruistic Puritans don’t fare well either. Their willingness to give away their wealth to the less fortunate means they are unprepared during a fatal emergency, which leaves them all dead. Perhaps, Mr Norris suggests, humanity is doomed, as people seem more inclined to compete than cooperate. “I don’t think this aspect of our personality will ever be resolved,” he says. “Like primates, we want to have two bananas where everyone else has one. I don’t think we want equality. We want the appearance of equality, but with an extra banana.”