All the Way

American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, Mass.

(617) 547-8300

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President Lyndon Johnson was perhaps not so different from Breaking Bad’s Walter White, said Ian Crouch in NewYorker.com. Actor Bryan Cranston, who played the meth-dealing science teacher in the just-concluded cable series, is currently appearing on stage as Johnson, another ruthless, deeply insecure person with a gift for manipulating other people to achieve his goals. Yet “the remarkable thing about All the Way is that we mostly manage to forget about Walter White altogether.” In this earnest play about Johnson’s first term in office, Cranston “plays LBJ big,’’ conveying his broad sense of humor, his imposing physicality, and his occasional bouts with manic despair.

It is “a dazzling, far-ranging, and moving” performance, said Frank Rizzo in Variety. Determined to honor John F. Kennedy’s legacy by passing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson becomes a true operator, pressuring Sen. Hubert Humphrey and various White House staffers to deliver and letting his good ol’ boy demeanor sour when he doesn’t get his way. Cranston’s LBJ “backslaps and backstabs his way through the rough waters of a Washington that, in its deep divisions, bears a depressing resemblance to our own,” said Charles Isherwood in The New York Times. Alas, his “winning star turn” can only breathe so much life into Robert Schenkkan’s play, which offers an elaborate refresher course in 1960s political history but “ultimately accrues minimal dramatic momentum.”

The problem is that his three-hour drama is “seriously overstuffed,” said Thom Geier in Entertainment Weekly. Schenkkan, a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Kentucky Cycle, is “no stranger to historical plays or to sprawling theatrical epics.” But with 40 characters and a boatload of extraneous subplots, his latest work could have used major streamlining. Cranston’s wobbly Texas accent and occasionally hyperactive stage manner show that he too “could benefit from more time to hone his portrait.” On the other hand, he nails the intelligence and Machiavellian craftiness behind Johnson’s “folksy gift of gab.” After winning awards and acclaim in Breaking Bad, Cranston appears “well on his way to creating another memorable, inscrutable all--American anti-hero.”