BWW Flashback: Meet the Recurring Characters of ALL THE WAY and THE GREAT SOCIETY

In 2014, Tony Award & Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan transported audiences to 1963 in ALL THE WAY- a play about the beginning of LBJ's presidency. Five years later, Schenkkan continues the story with The Great Society, which opens on Broadway tonight, October 1 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65th St).

All the Way took audiences behind the doors of the Oval Office and inside the first year of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency and his fight to pass a landmark civil rights bill.

Now in 1965, The Great Society follows his triumph in a landslide election to the agonizing decision not to run for re-election just three years later. It was an era that would define history forever: the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the creation of some of the greatest social programs America has ever known-and one man was at the center of it all: LBJ.

Before the new play opens, take a look back at just a few of the recurring characters from the LBJ saga and how they were/are portrayed onstage!

Lyndon B. Johnson:

Bryan Cranston in All the Way

Brian Cox in The Great Society

Lady Bird Johnson:

Betsy Aidem in All the Way

Barbara Garrick in The Great Society

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brandon Dirden in All the Way

Grantham Coleman in The Great Society

J. Edgar Hoover:

Michael McKean in All the Way

Gordon Clapp in The Great Society

Hubert Humphrey:

Robert Petkoff in All the Way

Richard Thomas in The Great Society

Additional overlapping characters include: Coretta Scott King, George Wallace, Ralph Abernathy, Everett Dirksen, Bob Moses, Robert McNamara, Stokely Carmichael, Cartha "Deke" DeLoach, Stanley Levison, and Seymore Trammel.

Photo Credit: Evgenia Eliseeva (All the Way), Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade (The Great Society)