All the Way is a gripping new play about a pivotal moment in American history. This drama will take audiences behind the doors of the Oval Office and inside the first years of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, and his fight to pass a landmark civil rights bill. Bryan Cranston, Michael McKean and Brandon J. Dirden will be joined by an ensemble cast playing additional roles such as Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, Robert McNamara, Coretta Scott King, Lady Bird Johnson, Bob Moses, Roy Wilkins, Lurleen Wallace, Stokely Carmichael, Walter Jenkins, Stanley Levison, George Wallace, Ralph Abernathy and Judge Smith.
All the Way was commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle and premiered at OSF in 2012. It then went on to play a sold-out and critically acclaimed run at the A.R.T. from September 13-October 12, 2013 starring Cranston. The play was awarded the 2013 inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, established through Columbia University in honor of the late Senator Kennedy, honoring new plays or musicals exploring US history and issues of the day.
The play might be a star vehicle but its star delivers. It's thrilling to watch Cranston go from his default, comic stance of forward-thrust hips and slumped shoulders, to fearsome, chest-puffed, confrontation. The play charts Johnson's first year in office and the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, taking LBJ from 'accidental president' (he took over after the killing of John F Kennedy) to elected man of the people, with meticulous fidelity. And this is the problem: so often it seems more like a putatively objective history lesson than an examination of character and compromise.
Riding the crest of his fame from 'Breaking Bad,' Mr. Cranston strides onto the Broadway stage with an admirable confidence, meeting the challenge of animating Mr. Schenkkan's sprawling civics lesson as if he's thoroughly at home. Although Johnson is not the exclusive focus of the play -- many passages focus on the strategizing among various black civil rights organizations -- Mr. Cranston's heat-generating performance galvanizes the production. Even when Johnson is offstage or the writing sags with exposition, the show, directed solidly if a little stolidly by Bill Rauch, retains the vitalizing imprint of his performance.
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