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 Johnson who emerges at the Neil Simon Theatre is ferocious and vulgar, likely to grab you by your throat and toss off a disgusting joke or throw around four-letter words. In Bryan Cranston's hands, he's completely irascible - and one of the highlights of the Broadway season... Cranston, fresh off his triumph as a drug kingpin in 'Breaking Bad,' shows what he can do in a Broadway debut, and it's astonishing... Watching Cranston bully, threaten, feel sorry for himself, compromise, bellow and turn the knife is a hoot, no matter which side of the aisle you sit. Like 'House of Cards,' the play explores the ugly sausage of politics and the gulf between the public and private politician...The other real star here is director Bill Rauch, who keeps this jigsaw puzzle humming along. There are countless scenes and a staggering number of parts, and the action spills out into the aisles. But moments melt into the next flawlessly, and the main actors pivot seamlessly, often not waiting for the actors in the last scene to leave.
Robert Schenkkan's 'All the Way' is not LBJ's first stage appearance, but it's the first time that he's made it all the way to Broadway, and the presence of Bryan Cranston in the cast is the sole reason for his arrival here. New plays don't reach Broadway nowadays without a movie or television star, and Mr. Cranston, lately of 'Breaking Bad,' is (at least for the moment) the latter. Far more important, he's also a totally assured stage performer who plays Johnson as a gangly, lapel-snatching wheedler in whom self-pity and rage are twisted together too tightly to rip apart. Yes, it's a caricature, and a garish one at that, but Mr. Cranston makes you believe in what you're seeing and hearing...Bill Rauch has staged 'All the Way' with a fluid physical vitality that makes the script seem smoother than it is...As for Mr. Cranston, he's a knockout. May he return to Broadway soon-in a less earnest play.
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