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.
It's been five years since Bryan Cranston's Tony-winning turn as Lyndon B. Johnson in Robert Schenkkan's 'All the Way.' Now Schenkkan has followed that epic historical pageant with a sequel, 'The Great Society,' opening Tuesday at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre, that like LBJ's second term dwells mostly in the shadows of its predecessor.
If it weren't so doggedly self-serious, Robert Schenkkan's The Great Society would be almost entertainingly bad. I didn't see its predecessor, All the Way, which won the Tony for Best Play in 2014 after the production, commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and directed by Bill Rauch, came to Broadway with Bryan Cranston as Lyndon Johnson - but after almost three hours of its leaden, long-winded, blithely self-congratulatory sequel, I think I'm good.
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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