The Great Society
by Deirdre
Donovan
Robert Schenkkan’s The Great Society, Part
II of his LBJ Plays, arrived at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, with a
star-studded cast and a ton of testosterone. Starring Brian Cox as Lyndon Baines Johnson, and directed by Bill Rauch,
it’s the companion piece to All the Way. And whether you’ve seen Part I or not, this meaty sequel stands
alone and is something to chew on.
Before parsing The Great Society, let’s
take a glance back at Schenkkan’s All the Way. It premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival in 2012, and two years later winged into New York. The drama focuses on the first eleven months
of LBJ’s (the media often used Johnson’s initials rather than his surname and
it indelibly stuck in the public’s psyche) presidency, bursting with energy, and soon became
the darling of the critics. It won the
2014 Tony Award for Best Play and garnered Bryan Cranston a well-deserved Tony
Award for Best Actor in a Play. And why
was it so mesmerizing? It captured
Johnson in his ascendancy before Viet Nam clouded his presidency.
To return to the current production, The Great
Society has wonderful synchronicity with All the Way. The Great Society also got its stage legs
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, debuting there on July 27, 2014. But in contrast to All the Way, it
deals with Johnson’s “legitimate” presidential term, in the years from 1965 to
1968. It follows his landslide victory
in the 1964 election and continues with his tumultuous ride through his
full-term presidency. Unsurprisingly,
it’s a darker play and paints Johnson as a tragic figure. Yes, you get a close look at his domestic
programs and controversial legislation linked to Civil Rights, Education, and
Health Care. And you also get a horrific
look at the Vietnam War spinning out of control and eclipsing his good
acts.
Get out your Who’s Who in American History. This play rounds-up the most prominent
figures from the '60s and lets you get up-close and personal with them. It takes you through the corridors of power,
into the Oval Office, and beyond the White House too. In fact, this theatrical event (Schenkkan and
Rauch both insist that it’s not intended to be a docudrama or a living newspaper)
presents a cast inhabiting more than fifty characters in two-dozen locations.
But more than acquainting you with the
movers-and-shakers of the 60s political world, The Great Society is an
exploration of Johnson’s presidency. What you discover by watching this piece is that Johnson in private was
an engaging raconteur and that he only adopted his flat tone for his
presidential addresses, which he felt brought more gravitas to his
speeches. Schenkkan also employs LBJ’s
“Texan twist” in his dialogue. Johnson,
who measured “six feet, four,” used his size to advantage and would literally
buttonhole a politician who he wanted to win over to his legislation and not
let go until he had finished what he had to say. Just watch Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy
go toe-to-toe in The Great Society—and you get a taste of his “Texan
twist.”
Indeed, the 36th president well
understood the moral ambiguities of power and politics and Schenkkan weaves
this into his script as well. To
wit: In Act 1, when Johnson is
consulting with Robert McNamara and General Westmoreland about Operation
Rolling Thunder that began on March 2, 1965, in response to a Viet Cong attack
on a U.S. air base at Pleiku and sending in two battalions of Marines, LBJ
soberly responds to McNamara: “All right. My answer is
yes but my judgment is no.” Was ever a
U.S. president more caught between a rock and hard place?
There are other revealing moments in this epic
drama. Consider Johnson’s monologue
early on in Act 1 that describes his growing up in the Hill Country of Texas
and his empathy for the women: “As a kid
in the Hill Country all the women I grew up with, my mother and my grandmother
and my aunts, they were beat down and broke ‘fore the age of thirty by a
miserable dog’s life . . . .Their backs were bent and their hands were crabbed
and all their beauty and promise was stolen from them. So when I went to
Washington for the first time I did whatever I had to do to bring electricity
to my part of the world. I begged, I
pleaded, I kissed up, I bent over, and yeah, I told a lie or two. . . .”
Okay, you might not always find Johnson likable
in The Great Society. But he
definitely comes across, time and again, as a humane person who wanted to
improve the lot of the poor, which he knew first-hand as a child.
Both All the Way and The Great Society were commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) as part of their
American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle, OSF’s multi-decade
program of commissioning and developing new plays inspired from moments of
change in United States history. According to an online interview with Rauch, both All the Way and The Great Society are intended to share in the scale and in the spirit
of Shakespeare’s history plays. And,
indeed, like them or not, their canvases are Shakespearean.
The acting is uniformly strong. Brian Cox, of course, is the star-turn here
and has the lion’s share of lines. His
Johnson, however, is far different than the exuberant Johnson that Brian
Cranston conveyed in All the Way. Cox, a veteran Shakespearean actor who has performed with The Royal
Shakespeare Company and at the National Theatre, infuses more gravity into his
principal. And if this dampens the
drama, so be it. Cox succeeds in
projecting the necessary authority and infusing the dark psychological
underlining into his beleaguered Johnson.
The ensemble, though excellent in their
respective parts, hardly have a chance to imprint their character on the
audience. In fact, most of the actors
have only cameo appearances in The Great Society. To be sure, it is a compromise that Robert
Schenkkan made when he wrote his sprawling script.
So prepare
to see some very fine actors here—Grantham Coleman (Martin Luther King, Jr.),
Richard Thomas (Hubert Humphrey), Marc Kudisch (Mayor Richard J. Daley), Bryce
Pinkham (Senator Robert F. Kennedy), and Frank Wood (Senator Everett
Dirksen)—traverse the stage, speak their character’s truth, and vanish.
The creative team support the story and action,
ensuring that everything briskly moves along and that scene changes are
seamless. David Korins’ raked wooden set
with “bull pens” on either side of the playing area (where performers sit when
not playing in their given scene) allows for the actors’ smooth entrances and
exits. David Weiner’s protean lighting
shifts between washing the whole stage and spotlighting a character. Linda Cho’s costumes includes the requisite
power suits, the manicured dress of the women, and the regular clothing and
uniforms of reporters and demonstrators. Last, but not least, Victoria Sagady’s projection designs, with a Tally
Board that flashes headlines and screens that show TV footage, help to anchor
the production to the 60s.
The production biggest drawback? It suffers from being the somber sequel to
Schenkkan’s Part I of the LBJ plays. The
Great Society inevitably has a darker theatrical
footprint than the former, and it’s naturally difficult for audiences to
embrace this thornier play.
That said, The Great Society is a
multi-faceted and perceptive portrait of our 36th president. You might not always like what you see, but
it is a truth that needs to be told.
The Great Society
Opened on October 1st, 2019
12-week limited engagement
At the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway
150 West 65th Street
For tickets and more information, visit www.GreatSocietyBroadway.com or phone 800-447-7400.