Tony Award & Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan will return to Broadway with the second of his two exhilarating dramas celebrating Lyndon B. Johnson's legacy: THE GREAT SOCIETY.
Capturing Johnson's passionate and aggressive attempts to build a great society for all, THE GREAT SOCIETY follows his epic 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 destruction of Vietnam, 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.
Generally, the writing is too busy sketching in historical detail to spare much attention to character development beyond the central figure, but Schenkkan can be commended for not letting his admiration for LBJ get in the way of a clear-eyed portrait. Cox provides a galvanizing center that keeps you watching, even more so as this driven, passionately civic-minded man begins to acknowledge the fatal flaws in his decision-making. It's a forceful, ultimately affecting performance that carries the sting of a disenchantment all too pertinent to American political life 51 years later.
If the play feels overstuffed, it's still an important history lesson. Schenkkan calls it a tragedy. But the real tragedy is that if we don't pay enough attention, history is hellbent on repeating itself.
2013 | Off-Broadway |
World Premiere Off-Broadway |
2019 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2020 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Wig and Hair Design | Tom Watson |
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