Review: Robert Schenkkan's THE GREAT SOCIETY Takes On The Last Four Years of LBJ's Presidency

With its title taken from our 36th president's campaign slogan, Robert Schenkkan's exciting and energetic drama ALL THE WAY won the popular vote on the 2014 Tony Award Best Play ballot. Directed at a full gallop by Bill Rauch, its twenty-member cast (many playing multiple roles) portrayed a familiar assortment of 1960s politicians, public leaders, journalists and supportive spouses, all trying to let their voices be heard above the cacophony of American politics.

Back then the plot revolved around how Vice President Lyndon B. President Johnson suddenly found himself the leader of the free world after JFK's assassination. With less than a year to go before the 1964 presidential election, the Texas Democrat attempted to get the Civil Rights Act passed despite the objections of his southern colleagues, facing pressure from black leaders, particularly Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who felt he was moving too slowly on the issue.

Schenkkan's new drama The Great Society, named for LBJ's idealist vision for his domestic agenda after being elected outright in '64, is also directed by Rauch, and more or less replicates its predecessor in style and substance, but there are major differences.

Gone is the sharp and forceful portrayal of the protagonist that earned Bryan Cranston a Tony. New star Brian Cox emphasizes the fellow's softer, homespun grit.

"One year when he was feelin' flush, my daddy took us all to the rodeo," the White House resident explains in a prologue.

"The thing everybody wanted to see, was the bull ridin'. You could get up close in those days," he continues, describing his full view of a "good ole boy" barely surviving his ride.

A graphic description of the dangers involved, including the real possibility of getting fatally gored by the bull, is followed by his pondering, "Why would you do that? Why would anybody do that?"

"Well there was one moment in his short ride when I could see that good ole boy's face and maybe it was a trick of the light but there was such a look of joy. Of triumph."

Set designer David Korins places the Oval Office at the center of what you might call a political bull ring, with prominent politicos seated up close, observing the action to see who gets thrown next before it's their chance to hopefully experience joy and triumph.

Once again, a major spotlight is on Dr. King (Grantham Coleman, an even-keeled, calming presence) as he pressures the president to use his influence on white southerners to get a voting rights bill passed. David Garrison, who will later appear as a smug Richard Nixon, is first seen as rambunctiously racist Alabama Governor George Wallace, ready for a confrontation against King's non-violent protesters in Selma.

King himself is feeling pressure from student organizer Stokely Carmichael (dynamic Marchant Davis) who is tired of compliancy.

"We've been saying 'Freedom!' for six years. What we're gonna start saying now is, 'BLACK POWER!' That's right. That's what we want, Black Power. We don't have to be ashamed of it."

THE GREAT SOCIETY is a good play, and a fine history lesson, but it appears sluggish when compared with its predecessor. With four years to cover, and the complex issue of how the seemingly uncontrollably escalating Vietnam War is getting in the way of developing domestic programs such as Medicare and Urban Renewal, the play hops from issue to issue with supporting characters doing little more than making guest appearances.

And sure, it's great fun to get a taste of Bryce Pinkham's abrasive Robert Kennedy, Marc Kudisch's bombastic Mayor Daley and Gordon Clapp's creepy J. Edgar Hoover (Richard Thomas, a fine actor, is restricted to playing Vice President Hubert Humphrey as a patient nice guy, a far cry from his firebrand public image), but despite some excellent scenes, by the time LBJ ends the play by gently taking his wife's arm and suggesting, "Let's go home, Bird," the audience may be more than ready to do the same.