David Hare’s 2003 docudrama examines the privatization of the British rail system and its literally disastrous aftermath. But Hare’s artful oral-history collage resonates beyond the dysfunctional particulars of Blairism, or even callous crisis management from 9/11 to Katrina. It’s a universal model of how calamitous projects high (the war in Iraq) and low (our own CTA) are created by policies designed to fail, navigated by profit-driven managers unaccountable to reality and protected after the fact by “investigatory” commissions. Credit director Brandon Ray and his uniformly superb cast for making this intellectually searing material utterly immediate–technically and emotionally, the characterizations in this New Leaf Theatre production are the match of anything you’d see at Steppenwolf or the Goodman. –Brian Nemtusak a Through 3/3: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Lincoln Park Cultural Center, 2045 N. Lincoln Park West, 773-828-4387, $12-$15.