New York Review: ALL THE WAY
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
"All the way with LBJ" was the slogan of Lyndon Baines Johnson's presidential campaign in 1964, having become an "accidental president" after JFK's assassination. In this new play by Robert Schenkkan, we see the behind-the-scenes machinations in the eight months' run-up to that election.
Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad") has got Johnson's accent and mannerisms and physical stance perfectly: they even made his ears bigger. Performing history, which for many people in the audience is living memory, is significantly different from the behind-the-scenes machinations we saw in the recent movie, Lincoln.
All the Way gives us three hours of political history, awash in folksy Southern parables about desert snakes and horses and barn raising. "Nothin' comes free—not even good. Especially good." So we are warned that presidential politics is a dirty business; we witness J. Edgar Hoover's (Michael McKean) wiretaps, Stokely Carmichael's (William Jackson Harper) willingness to have Summer of Freedom workers murdered to stir up public opinion, Martin Luther King's (Brandon J. Dirden) affairs with blondes, George Wallace's (Rob Campbell) keeping LBJ off the Alabama ballot, and Hubert Humphries (Robert Petkoff) mealymouthing everywhere. But because the players and the ugliness are familiar, the show, always interesting, becomes plodding as the months go by, despite director Bill Rauch's quick pacing and imaginative use of theatrical devices.
LBJ's mission was to make the Emancipation Proclamation law with the Civil Rights Act, and it is shocking to be reminded that in 1964 the South was still segregated. Johnson vowed to continue Kennedy's civil rights promise, "Let us begin" with, "Let us continue." The activist comedian Dick Gregory said that when LBJ announced his commitment to Civil Rights, "20 million Negroes unpacked." The developing and damaging events during this same year in Viet Nam are all but ignored, since Schenkkan's focus is sharp and exclusive.
What is not shocking is the manipulations, threats, bullying, greed, self-interest and sheer baldfaced power-grabbing that went on behind the scenes. In the face of the current dysfunctional Congress and the public's general disgust with politicians amid scandals, we lost our illusions about the nobility of politics. So the intended effect of All the Way seems short-circuited and old news. When Cranston as Johnson stands before us at the end of the play and asks, "Did it make you feel squeamish?" we are apt to think, "No, no more than usual."
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At the Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd St. 800-745-3000, or ticketmaster.com.