The play “All the Way” depicts the early Lyndon Johnson presidency.

The play All the Way at the ART depicts the conflicts of LBJ's first year in the White House.

Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way, starring Emmy winner Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad as President Lyndon Johnson, has incited not only “buzz” but audience demand: the production, which runs through October 12, sold out before opening night. It premiered last summer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), directed by Bill Rauch ’84, who also directs the current American Repertory Theater (ART) production. (Rauch, artistic director of OSF, is one of the theater professionals featured in Harvard Magazine’s exploration of “The Future of Theater.”)

Playwright Schenkkan conceived Johnson as a Shakespearean protagonist, and Cranston brings him vividly alive as a towering, flawed, likable, and charismatic figure who drives the two-act, three-hour play. Seventeen talented actors playing 44 roles surround LBJ, as Johnson navigates the tumultuous first year of his presidency, from November 22, 1963, to his election in 1964. The multiple roles produce some casting ironies: Reed Birney, for example, plays Senators Hubert Humphrey and Strom Thurmond; Susannah Schulman plays Muriel Humphrey and Alabama first lady Lurleen Wallace; and Peter Jay Fernandez, who acts the part of NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins, also turns in a cameo as a shoeshiner polishing senatorial footwear.

Most of the action turns on the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the election campaign that pitted LBJ against Barry Goldwater and Wallace. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., convincingly realized by Brandon Dirden, stands as the moral anchor of the play, which dramatizes the divisions in the black community at that time, with Ralph Abernathy, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, and Wilkins voicing competing strategies and tactics. Hubert Humphrey, then Senate majority whip and aspiring vice president, and meddlesome FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Michael McKean), also share ample stage time with Johnson.

 The audience sees LBJ as the consummate politician, capable of expert maneuvering and surgically precise arm-twisting, a leader with vision and ideals, yet grounded at all times in political pragmatism. Cranston’s bravura performance in the lead role illuminates Johnson’s earthy, profane humor and nearly irresistible persuasiveness, along with the conflicts that made his Oval Office a combat zone as well as an arena of extraordinary social invention.

There will be a panel discussion of the play, moderated by Fletcher University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and including Peter Jay Fernandez, along with three scholars, on September 23 at 4:00 P.M. at the ART.

You might also like

What of the Humble Pencil?

Review: At the Harvard Art Museums’ new exhibit, drawing takes center stage

‘Passengers’ at A.R.T. Blends Acrobatics with Einstein’s Relativity

Review: Quantum mechanics meets circus arts at the American Repertory Theater’s performance

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

Most popular

Is the Constitution Broken?

Harvard legal scholars debate the state of our founding national document.

Paolo Pasco and the art of making crosswords

Paolo Pasco and the art of making crosswords

Harvard Research Funding Will Resume, Government Signals

Notices of grant reinstatements follow a court ruling, but the Trump administration could still appeal. 

Explore More From Current Issue

Room filled with furniture made from tightly rolled newspaper sheets.

A Paper House in Massachusetts

The 1920s Rockport cottage reflects resourceful ingenuity.

Man in gray sweater standing in hallway with colorful abstract art on wall.

How Do Single-Celled Organisms Learn and Remember?

A Harvard neuroscientist’s quest to model memory

Illustration of scientists injecting large syringe with mitochondria into human heart.

Do Mitochondria Hold the Power to Heal?

From Alzheimer’s to cancer, this tiny organelle might expand treatment options.