All the Way

The American Repertory Theatre launches headlong into its new season with a new play by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Shenkkan ("The Kentucky Cycle") that puts a lens over the turbulent eleven months between the time Lyndon B. Johnson (Bryan Cranston, "Breaking Bad") assumed the presidency in the wake of JFK and the 1964 presidential election that put LBJ back into the White House after his historic signing of the Civil Rights Act.

The play may focus on LBJ's efforts to round up the needed votes for his landmark legislation, and on his complicated relations with other major figures of the time (Martin Luther King, Jr. (Brandon J. Dirden), FBI head honcho J. Edgar Hoover (Michael McKean), the notorious Senator Strom Thurmond, and the infamous Gov. George Wallace (Dan Butler) among them), but it is very much keyed to contemporary problems like partisan bellicosity, Congressional gridlock, and a sense of grievance by the fearful and the prejudiced that granting others equal rights under the law somehow "oppresses" members of the politically favored majority. Of course, back then there was a real sense that it was important to defend the poor by engaging the power of government to alleviate their hardships; now, it's more fashionable to defend the rich from the prospect of taxes or other communally-minded obligations, but these reversals in national priorities notwithstanding a few timeless topics shine through, and it's on these things that Schenkkan builds his play.

There is, for example, the eternal conundrum of leadership -- not just how to reconcile opposing camps (sometimes vitriolically opposed), but align the players within given movements so that their competing agendas and conflicting passions don't counteract and cancel one another out. Progress, as it turns out, is not a simple thing, and "common sense" -- so often the rallying cry of those who cling to a bigoted status quo -- is often steeped in brute force, rather than intellectual exercise.

Schenkkan's writing captures all of that, but such elements are not the breathing core of "All the Way." Rather, what dazzles about this play is the speed at which it moves along, and the fantastic characters who inhabit it. The cast exude an energy that crackles, none more so than Cranston: His LBJ is a salty, sometimes crude, verbal Sumo wrestler who takes charge of every encounter and leaves no doubt about who's in charge. When he comes up against blowhards like Wallace, LBJ goes for crafty manipulation, and sometimes even outright lies; when he's dealing with smart, but less testosterone-fueled, allies such as Hubert Humphrey (Reed Birney), he coaxes and bullies by turn. So white-hot is LBJ's basic mode of operating that even his beloved wife, Lady Bird (Betsy Aidem) sometimes gets scorched; after he sends her away with a vicious outburst (rather typical of his manner with women in general), LBJ's wife bursts into sobs, but not because he's bruised her feelings. "I feel so sorry for him," she confesses.

LBJ doesn't much feel sorry for himself, however. Politics, he ruminates, is war, and nothing short of war. Unless, of course, it's a knife fight. In any case, it's a nasty business, and not the sort of thing for gentlemen. Rather, it's a game for sharks who know how to dress, speak, and act like gentleman -- but also know when to let their teeth flash.

The eleven months in question brim with history and tremble with the passions of a nation at a crossroads. True transformation is possible, with the elevation of the human condition for millions at stake. While some strain to leap forward, others haul back just as hard to arrest progress. Like a whirlwind of reassurance, dominance, and sheer momentum, LBJ cuts through objection and obstructionism, deploying brilliant parliamentary tactics and coolly precise personal feints and jabs. If politics is a knife fight, LBJ's a Ninja; his twin blades are flattery and threat, and if he's capable of surgical excisions to ensure passage of important bills he's just as willing to resort to wholesale evisceration -- of people or of legislation -- to attain his goals.

Cranston is absolutely terrific at all of this. He's charming, effusive, cranky, crotchety, randy, and full of the kind of lowbrow humor (and rough-edged insight) that our PC age has all but chased into the shadows. Cranston may pull on a Texas drawl for the role, but he also gets into the character's skin and fills LBJ out as a man of complex contradictions that drive, rather than dispel, his forceful personality.

Director Bill Rauch has a cast of luminous talents on his hands, and he knows how to work with them. Every role is calibrated to create an almost orchestral overall experience. The technical side of things aligns here, as well. Christopher Acebo's set is a rounded space defined by handsome wood furnishings, marble steps, and a circular grey carpet in which a presidential desk -- or, at one point, a civil rights worker's coffin -- rises. This is Oval office, the chambers of the U.S. House, a series of motel rooms, and even a bar where lawmakers swill whiskey and ideology together, but its most prevalent effect is as a courtroom: Here's where LBJ's legacy can be judged, away from today's 24/7 cycle of talking heads and commentarians.

It's a timely moment for such a play. One of LBJ's most critical victories was the Voting Rights Act of 1965; he also signed into law the Food Stamp Act of 1964. Both have come under direct assault recently, along with other governmental and one wonders whether the "great society" we might have been has slipped away forever, leaving only dregs for the entitled to snatch at and everyone else to fend as best they can with diminished opportunities and a resurgence of poverty. If so, LBJ may be remembered as the last great president, in the sense that he was the last president to achieve truly great things for the nation as a whole.