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 all very interesting and fair-minded in a retro kind of way - and surely educational for the young. Its even-handed, centrist point of view is also distinctively out of step with the moment, a Biden-esque island in today's sea of activist progressive writing, even on Broadway. But the whole shebang nonetheless lacks bite.
What we get less of a sense of, despite Society's largely sympathetic portrait of its still controversial subject, is the turmoil Johnson must have endured, along with other leaders he engaged. Their dialogue is often too obvious to invite reflection, so that even the most supple actors can seem as if they're reciting lines in a well-crafted reenactment of historical events. Richard Thomas, who generally makes any production worth seeing, is wasted as Johnson veep Hubert Humphrey, presented here as part dutiful aide, part convenient foil. Marc Kudisch juggles a few heavies who contest Johnson's more progressive policies, among them Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley, and emerge as cardboard slimeballs-accurate in spirit, perhaps, but less interesting in execution.
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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