Review: CRANSTON A BORN LEADER IN 'ALL THE WAY' AT A.R.T.

Written by Robert Schenkkan; directed by Bill Rauch; set design, Christopher Acebo; costume design, Deborah M. Dryden; lighting design, Jan Cox; composer/sound design, Paul James Prendergast; projections, Shawn Sagady; dramaturg, Tom Bryant; dialect coach, Rebecca Clark Carey; associate director, Emily Sophia Knapp; production stage manager, Matthew Farrell

Cast in Order of Speaking:

Bryan Cranston, Betsy Aidem, Christopher Liam Moore, Susannah Schulman, Reed Birney, Dakin Matthews, Michael McKean, Arnie Burton, Brandon J. Dirden, J. Bernard Calloway, Ethan Phillips, William Jackson Harper, Richard Poe, Crystal A. Dickinson, Dan Butler, Peter Jay Fernandez, Eric Lenox Abrams

Performances and Tickets:

Now through October 12, American Repertory Theatre, Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass. The run is SOLD OUT, however a limited number of Standing Room Only tickets may be available for certain dates on the day of performance. For information call the Box Office at 617-547-8300.

"I wonder what LBJ would do if he were president today."

That's the thought that kept running through my mind while watching three-time Emmy Award winner Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcolm in the Middle) positively channel the late president Lyndon Baines Johnson in Robert Schenkkan's terrific new play All the Way. Given that All the Way is currently enjoying a sold-out run at The American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., I wouldn't be surprised to see it take its place alongside other recent A.R.T.-to-Broadway transfers - Tony Award winners Once, Porgy and Bess and Pippin - and the newly opened and critically acclaimed The Glass Menagerie which just extended through February 2014.

All the Way is part personal profile, part history lesson, and all political power-brokering as Schenkkan masterfully puts today's racial tensions, regressive law-making and Congressional gridlock under the microscope not by drawing obvious parallels but by focusing squarely on a similarly contentious time in the not too distant past. The playwright quite wisely and effectively lets the politicians of the day speak eloquently for themselves.

The time is 1963. President John F. Kennedy has just been assassinated and his crude but whip-smart vice president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, has been sworn into office. A self-professed good old boy from Texas, Johnson craves but doesn't necessarily get the respect he feels he deserves. Simultaneously shocked and excited by his sudden ascent to the presidency, he seizes the power immediately, with great eagerness and relish.

From the get-go Johnson knows that he has a very brief window of opportunity to convince the Democratic Party that he should be their man come election day the following November. That task won't be easy, since Johnson is being pressured by a host of conservative Southern Democrats led by his good friend Sen. Richard Russell and a liberal contingent led by the likable Senator Hubert Humphrey. He also has to contend with the dangerous J. Edgar Hoover who uses the information he gathers as director of the FBI to blackmail and extort. Nevertheless Johnson launches full-throttle toward passing what he believes to be the most important legislation of his time: a Civil Rights Act that includes the crucial Voting Rights Act so adamantly called for by the Reverend DR. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As Johnson, Cranston is a force of nature, bargaining, cajoling, glad-handing, and even tyrannizing those around him to accomplish the little victories he knows will lead to the ultimate prize. A much less physically imposing man than Johnson was, Cranston summons an inner brute force to match LBJ's confidence and unrelenting will. What makes his characterization so fascinating, though, is that he exposes a personal side of the public man that most of us never knew. Cranston makes this crass and at times paranoid power monger charming and quite likable. He also suggests that Johnson, for all his unthinking racist comments and chauvinistic attitudes toward women, really believes in Civil Rights and a Great Society in which poverty no longer exists.

There are perhaps too many plot points and too many ancillary characters in All the Way. Schenkmann has a cast of 17 portray 45 different politicians, activists, aides and spouses. Without a score card it's hard to keep track of who is playing whom. But the details and the characters are actually less important than what they say and how they goad Johnson on, as either allies or foes, driving him to succeed at all costs. The late night phone calls, backroom bargaining, principle-bending compromises and sly negotiations are all aphrodisiacs for this power-hungry lot.

Cranston is unquestionably the top dog in All the Way, but the cast is filled with recognizable character actors of the finest order. As Martin Luther King, Jr., Brandon J. Dirden strikes a heart-breaking balance between his passion and his pragmatism when deciding between confrontation and compromise. Reed Birney as Hubert Humphrey visibly hunches from the pain of sacrificing certain legislation now for the chance to enact more and better programs later.

As the villains J. Edgar Hoover and Governor George Wallace, Michael McKean and Dan Butler are positively loathsome. They manage to resurrect all the anger, frustration, and frightening memories of a time when college students and freedom marchers were beaten and killed in the streets while hoodEd White supremacists burned and bombed houses without retribution. What makes their performances even more chilling, though, is how they cloak their darker motivations with an affable normalcy - and a fundamental belief that they are right.

Other performances of note are turned in by Dakin Matthews as the South's de facto Senate leader Richard Russell and Christopher Liam Moore as LBJ's right-hand man Walter Jenkins. Matthews is all Georgia charm and friendly counsel when speaking as a mentor to Johnson, but behind closed doors with his conservative Southern cronies his determination to stand firm against the changing social tide is implacable. Jenkins, Johnson's top aide, is the one gentle soul amidst all the political blood-letting, and Moore is guileless in portraying his puppy-dog loyalty to him. Clearly like a son to Johnson, he is devastated beyond consolation when Hoover unearths a secret about him and uses it as leverage against Johnson. Moore's guilt at this turn of events is shattering in its simplicity, and Cranston's hurt and loss are almost as gut-wrenching.

Director Bill Rauch navigates his many actors through countless character and scene changes seamlessly, drawing exquisite performances from one and all. Costumes by Deborah M. Dryden, absolutely perfect in every detail, fix the time period unquestionably in 1963-64. The set by Christopher Acebo suggests the Oval Office and the U.S. Congress combined with wooden panels and benches rising in semi-circle around a central carpeted floor. This configuration easily morphs into the president's bedroom, various motel rooms, government offices, and newsrooms. Huge slide projections taking up the entire back wall depict everything from the White House gardens to a bank of black and white television sets airing the latest news in consort with the events taking place on stage. At times there's an eerie foreshadowing of the assassinations we know will come. There's even a hint at who may be involved.

In the end, All the Way (with LBJ) earns new-found respect for a man who may not have felt it in his own lifetime. For all his faults and demons, he knew how to get things done.

Congress, are you listening???

PHOTOS BY EVGENIA ELISEEVA: Bryan Cranston as President Lyndon Baines Johnson; Reed Birney as Sen. Hubert Humphrey and Bryan Cranston; J. Bernard Calloway as Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Brandon J. Dirden as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Michael McKean as J. Edgar Hoover; the cast of 'All the Way'