#1
Robert Schenkkan’s ALL THE WAY left me with mixed feelings. I wanted to love it, but in the end, I mostly appreciated it. If you saw “Lincoln,” you know the blueprint. It’s marketed as a bio-drama, but it’s actually the story of passing controversial bill through Congress – in this case, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – and the behind-the-scenes glad-handing and back-stabbing required to do that. The play opens with Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One, just after being sworn in following the assassination of JFK; from there, act one unfolds as a flurry of medium-length expository scenes. The language is naturalistic and accessible, but it’s a barrage of information, 90 minutes of fast-moving chatter about characters we never meet (Barry Goldwater, Bobby Kennedy) or characters that pop up for single scenes, played by ensemble members handling multiple roles. (And this being the early ‘60s, it seems like all the men are wearing the same suit, making some minor characters tough to keep track of.) The audience gets a lot thrown at them in the first half, and if you have no prior knowledge of the SNCC (pronounced casually as “Snick”) or the lost-to-history MFDP, you may, at times, feel a little at sea. At best, the first act engages on the merits of the performances and how compelling the history is; at worst, it’s drawn out and boring, even some short scenes feeling endless. The cumulative effect is a little alienating.
The pay-off, though, happily comes after that groundwork has been laid, and the second act unfolds with greater intensity, character development, and dramatic action. No longer are facts whizzing at us like bullets, as the important ones have been embedded into the story and can now be active pawns in the unspooling plot lines. A heavier second-act focus on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his black activist colleagues helps significantly. The script still meanders a bit, but now we see the characters as people rather than vessels for exposition, and the best stuff happens as the story hurtles toward its conclusion – I assume it’s no spoiler to say – the passage of the bill and Johnson’s subsequent re-election. Perhaps because that’s the stuff of well-known history, the stakes never get high enough for a knockout dramatic climax, and the final moment should be punched-up or rethought altogether. It’s a little dramaturgically slimey. There are clear parallels to (and several pointed mentions of) Lincoln’s administration, and topical similarities to today’s Congress and the red/blue divisiveness under Obama – particularly about the Affordable Care Act – are worth noting.
The direction by Bill Rauch is of the traffic-cop variety. The show is well-paced. The staging is clean, if unremarkable and unimaginative, though that’s partially due to limitations imposed by the large, implacable, and bland unit set. I’m not sure if it’s because we sat second row, but the frequent back-wall projections meant to evoke settings – the oval office, the Rose Garden, a Mississippi crime scene, a front porch in Alabama – didn’t work for me. I could objectively process what they meant to a given scene, but everything played downstage center, left, or right, on a solid blue floor enclosed by three large Congressional-style seating pieces prevented any outside atmosphere from permeating. Perhaps a view from further back would allow the scope to be taken in; I saw a functional but sterile set with boring projections.
Saving the best news for last, the cast is uniformly impressive.
Though the play itself is equitable to its myriad characters – Dr. King feels, at times, as significant a character as the president – this production is firmly focused on Bryan Cranston’s Johnson. (Wut?) And I’m happy to report it’s one hell of a performance. At the third preview, there were more than a few line stumbles, and no more than by Mr. Cranston himself. But it’s a monster role and must be very intimidating on paper. The play makes two or three obligatory digressions into LBJ’s personal life (Lady Bird is a supportive punching bag who has him on a diet), but since it’s mostly exposition disguised as drama, it’s up to the actors to craft their characters from the ground up, and Cranston is no slouch. His LBJ commands attention, publicly astute in the face of crises, but privately filled with paralyzing and almost paranoid insecurity. It’s a physically impressive performance, inhabiting every square inch of his being; he has your attention as the silent side of a phone conversation, his eyes squinting, mouth drawn back in incredulous anger, with a posture somewhere between a panther ready to attack and house of cards about to fold. He spits and seethes and stalks and strikes, manipulating everyone around him even while racked by self-doubt. He’s complicated and authentic, a portrait of political idealism surviving through sheer force of will. It’s a reminder – to me, at least – that Mr. Cranston is one of the most versatile American actors working today. If the show comes to New York, he’s got his Tony nomination in Jan Maxwell’s proverbial bag.
Brandon J. Dirden, so wonderful in Signature’s exquisite PIANO LESSON last season, is by turns powerful and vulnerable as Martin Luther King Jr., morally ambiguous and very, very human. Michael McKean’s J. Edgar Hoover proves a tough nut to crack. It’s a muted performance; he often stares blankly when confronted by LBJ, and only truly comes alive -- maniacally, almost comically -- during his relentless hunting of MLK. It’s not an ineffective performance, but he’s impenetrable in his interiority, and McKean’s choices puzzle as often as they engage.
“Lincoln” alum and TV stalwart Dakin Matthews is perfection as the powerful Southern Democrat segregationist senator Dick Russell, who spearheads a 57-day filibuster predicated, of course, on the protection of states’ rights. And journeyman character actor Reed Birney imbues LBJ colleague-cum-lackey Hubert Humphrey with self-awareness and dignity, which is impressive, since the character could easily come off as a pathetic, ineffectual hanger-on.
The ensemble is strong, and many in the cast get their respective moments to shine, but noteworthy among them is William Jackson Harper as the fiery activist Stokely Carmichael, whose angry and acute voice of reason is often undercut by the sad realities of the politics surrounding the CRA.
I don’t think the play can un-stick itself from the trap of so many bio-historical dramas, where complicated events involving multiple players must be telescoped into 2-3 hours, but shaving 20 minutes off of act one would be a big help. Both ALL THE WAY and “Lincoln” center on Southern, socially progressive, yarn-spinning commanders-in-chief. In my opinion, “Lincoln” worked due in large part to Kushner’s dazzling flights of linguistic fancy, taking big political ideas and Shakespeare-sizing them. Schenkkan writes far more naturalistically. That’s a fine and reasonable choice, but the sheer density of it feels repetitive and prosaic. So, either disguise that exposition better or trim off some of the fat. The most oft-heard comment in the lobby afterwards was “I liked the second act better than the first,” and I didn’t overhear any out-and-out raves, save for Mr. Cranston.
But as evidenced by the sold-out run at ART, this play is selling on Cranston’s name and will do the same if it transfers. No matter how good it is, this isn’t the sort of play that runs and runs, but it would be nice if it were good enough to be remembered for its merits as much as for the star turn at its center.
Posted: 9/16/13 at 11:41am
Robert Schenkkan’s ALL THE WAY left me with mixed feelings. I wanted to love it, but in the end, I mostly appreciated it. If you saw “Lincoln,” you know the blueprint. It’s marketed as a bio-drama, but it’s actually the story of passing controversial bill through Congress – in this case, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – and the behind-the-scenes glad-handing and back-stabbing required to do that. The play opens with Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One, just after being sworn in following the assassination of JFK; from there, act one unfolds as a flurry of medium-length expository scenes. The language is naturalistic and accessible, but it’s a barrage of information, 90 minutes of fast-moving chatter about characters we never meet (Barry Goldwater, Bobby Kennedy) or characters that pop up for single scenes, played by ensemble members handling multiple roles. (And this being the early ‘60s, it seems like all the men are wearing the same suit, making some minor characters tough to keep track of.) The audience gets a lot thrown at them in the first half, and if you have no prior knowledge of the SNCC (pronounced casually as “Snick”) or the lost-to-history MFDP, you may, at times, feel a little at sea. At best, the first act engages on the merits of the performances and how compelling the history is; at worst, it’s drawn out and boring, even some short scenes feeling endless. The cumulative effect is a little alienating.
The pay-off, though, happily comes after that groundwork has been laid, and the second act unfolds with greater intensity, character development, and dramatic action. No longer are facts whizzing at us like bullets, as the important ones have been embedded into the story and can now be active pawns in the unspooling plot lines. A heavier second-act focus on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his black activist colleagues helps significantly. The script still meanders a bit, but now we see the characters as people rather than vessels for exposition, and the best stuff happens as the story hurtles toward its conclusion – I assume it’s no spoiler to say – the passage of the bill and Johnson’s subsequent re-election. Perhaps because that’s the stuff of well-known history, the stakes never get high enough for a knockout dramatic climax, and the final moment should be punched-up or rethought altogether. It’s a little dramaturgically slimey. There are clear parallels to (and several pointed mentions of) Lincoln’s administration, and topical similarities to today’s Congress and the red/blue divisiveness under Obama – particularly about the Affordable Care Act – are worth noting.
The direction by Bill Rauch is of the traffic-cop variety. The show is well-paced. The staging is clean, if unremarkable and unimaginative, though that’s partially due to limitations imposed by the large, implacable, and bland unit set. I’m not sure if it’s because we sat second row, but the frequent back-wall projections meant to evoke settings – the oval office, the Rose Garden, a Mississippi crime scene, a front porch in Alabama – didn’t work for me. I could objectively process what they meant to a given scene, but everything played downstage center, left, or right, on a solid blue floor enclosed by three large Congressional-style seating pieces prevented any outside atmosphere from permeating. Perhaps a view from further back would allow the scope to be taken in; I saw a functional but sterile set with boring projections.
Saving the best news for last, the cast is uniformly impressive.
Though the play itself is equitable to its myriad characters – Dr. King feels, at times, as significant a character as the president – this production is firmly focused on Bryan Cranston’s Johnson. (Wut?) And I’m happy to report it’s one hell of a performance. At the third preview, there were more than a few line stumbles, and no more than by Mr. Cranston himself. But it’s a monster role and must be very intimidating on paper. The play makes two or three obligatory digressions into LBJ’s personal life (Lady Bird is a supportive punching bag who has him on a diet), but since it’s mostly exposition disguised as drama, it’s up to the actors to craft their characters from the ground up, and Cranston is no slouch. His LBJ commands attention, publicly astute in the face of crises, but privately filled with paralyzing and almost paranoid insecurity. It’s a physically impressive performance, inhabiting every square inch of his being; he has your attention as the silent side of a phone conversation, his eyes squinting, mouth drawn back in incredulous anger, with a posture somewhere between a panther ready to attack and house of cards about to fold. He spits and seethes and stalks and strikes, manipulating everyone around him even while racked by self-doubt. He’s complicated and authentic, a portrait of political idealism surviving through sheer force of will. It’s a reminder – to me, at least – that Mr. Cranston is one of the most versatile American actors working today. If the show comes to New York, he’s got his Tony nomination in Jan Maxwell’s proverbial bag.
Brandon J. Dirden, so wonderful in Signature’s exquisite PIANO LESSON last season, is by turns powerful and vulnerable as Martin Luther King Jr., morally ambiguous and very, very human. Michael McKean’s J. Edgar Hoover proves a tough nut to crack. It’s a muted performance; he often stares blankly when confronted by LBJ, and only truly comes alive -- maniacally, almost comically -- during his relentless hunting of MLK. It’s not an ineffective performance, but he’s impenetrable in his interiority, and McKean’s choices puzzle as often as they engage.
“Lincoln” alum and TV stalwart Dakin Matthews is perfection as the powerful Southern Democrat segregationist senator Dick Russell, who spearheads a 57-day filibuster predicated, of course, on the protection of states’ rights. And journeyman character actor Reed Birney imbues LBJ colleague-cum-lackey Hubert Humphrey with self-awareness and dignity, which is impressive, since the character could easily come off as a pathetic, ineffectual hanger-on.
The ensemble is strong, and many in the cast get their respective moments to shine, but noteworthy among them is William Jackson Harper as the fiery activist Stokely Carmichael, whose angry and acute voice of reason is often undercut by the sad realities of the politics surrounding the CRA.
I don’t think the play can un-stick itself from the trap of so many bio-historical dramas, where complicated events involving multiple players must be telescoped into 2-3 hours, but shaving 20 minutes off of act one would be a big help. Both ALL THE WAY and “Lincoln” center on Southern, socially progressive, yarn-spinning commanders-in-chief. In my opinion, “Lincoln” worked due in large part to Kushner’s dazzling flights of linguistic fancy, taking big political ideas and Shakespeare-sizing them. Schenkkan writes far more naturalistically. That’s a fine and reasonable choice, but the sheer density of it feels repetitive and prosaic. So, either disguise that exposition better or trim off some of the fat. The most oft-heard comment in the lobby afterwards was “I liked the second act better than the first,” and I didn’t overhear any out-and-out raves, save for Mr. Cranston.
But as evidenced by the sold-out run at ART, this play is selling on Cranston’s name and will do the same if it transfers. No matter how good it is, this isn’t the sort of play that runs and runs, but it would be nice if it were good enough to be remembered for its merits as much as for the star turn at its center.
CHURCH DOOR TOUCAN GAY MARKETING PUPPIES MUSICAL THEATER STAPLES PERIOD OIL BITCHY SNARK HOLES
