'The Great Society': New Play Examines the Ambitious Presidency of Lyndon Johnson

Playwright Alexander Harrington has much to say about President Lyndon Johnson in The Great Society, the compelling and ambitious new play now on view at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row. 

With a running time closing in on three hours, some pruning is in order.  Yet it is easy to sympathize with Mr. Harrington’s impulse to avoid leaving out anything that would shed light on Mr. Johnson, a complicated larger-than-life personality whose Presidential career was launched with one instantaneous explosive event and was later brought to its knees by a more prolonged one.   

I’m speaking, of course, of the assassination of Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, President Kennedy, and the impossibly-out-of-control crisis known as Vietnam.  Either of these bookend events could have inspired a play in and of itself.  Does anyone, for instance, remember the 1967 eviscerating satire MacBird by Barbara Garson, in which President and Lady Bird Johnson were depicted as Shakespeare’s ambitious assassins, the Macbeths?  (Starring Stacy Keach and Rue McClanahan as the wanton couple, it left an indelible memory in my teenage mind, falling so close in time to the events it depicted).  

But Mr. Harrington has no such ax to grind, other than to illuminate our understanding of a President whose place in history remains opaque.  He calls this play The Great Society in order to focus on Mr. Johnson’s powerful social justice agenda, one that extended to civil right for African Americans, access to medical care for all, and an all-out assault on poverty in America.  Lest we forget, Mr. Johnson used his highly polished skills as a tenacious persuader and arm-twister to push through the Senate and House of Representatives a remarkable number of landmark pieces of legislation—among them, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Medicare—and to establish such programs as Head Start, VISTA, the Job Corps, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.    

All of this occurred under the noses of the Conservative members of Congress, who found themselves outranked and outmaneuvered at every turn.  (I pause here to note that in the current political climate, the Conservatives are doing their very best to dismantle every vestige of the progressive programs that first saw the light of day during the Johnson Administration.)

But Mr. Harrington’s play is not just about progressive politics.  President Johnson was a complex man, with an outsize personality characteristic of someone with bipolar disorder.  He was given to periods of indefatigable mania and bouts of soul-withering depression, both of which are on display in The Great Society.  Like many others who see themselves as visionary leaders, Mr. Johnson suffered from great self-doubt, and demanded both gratitude and loyalty from those on whom he bestowed his largesse.  This led to episodes of bombastic anger and rifts between Mr. Johnson and members of his inner circle, including his Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

It also led to some interesting interactions, congenial and otherwise, between Mr. Johnson and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., even when they were on the same side of issues of civil rights.  Mr. Harrington has written several scenes (not all of them historically accurate, as the playwright explains in an essay in the playbill) that bring together the two great leaders, who often quarrel over “timing.” 

Other scenes in the play depict Mr. Johnson’s interactions with members of the Senate and Congress, with his wife Lady Bird, and with his advisors.  Key among these is his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, instrumental in prodding Mr. Johnson into escalating the Vietnam conflict into full-scale war. 

Ultimately, it is Vietnam that pulls at and plagues the Johnson presidency to the end.

The Democrats are frantic that, in his first Presidential run after completing President Kennedy’s term, Mr. Johnson must not be seen as too “dovish” on Vietnam, especially in the wake of his opponent’s (Barry Goldwater) staunch hawkish stance.  Even so, Johnson wants to limit the war and agrees with those who advise for an early withdrawal of U.S. troops.  He gladly accepts McNamara's estimate that it will likely be over by 1965, shortly after the election.  Of course, that never comes to pass, and the war begins to dominate every conversation and every decision, and the shouts of anti-war protestors (“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”) drown out all else. 

Mr. Harrington does a fine job of capturing all this grand sweep of history in The Great Society.  I would simply urge him to go back and excise those occasional places where dramatic intercourse crosses the line into the territory of classroom lecture.  Or, if he simply can’t let go, he should perhaps turn this one play into two—one ending at Johnson’s defeat of Goldwater; the other ending as it does now, with Johnson’s capitulation to the tide of popular opinion. 

Meanwhile, we have this production, which continues at the Clurman through August 24.  While it doesn’t completely succeed at avoiding a certain static quality (how many ways are there to depict a meeting in the Oval Office?), the play is well served by its cast of 15 (plus one offstage voice), doing excellent work under the direction of Seth Duerr.

Particularly effective are Yaakov Sullivan as Senator Richard Russell, Curtis Wiley as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Charles Gray as Bayard Rustin, Reed Armstrong (most evocative of Robert McNamara), Jeff Burchfield as a simpering George Wallace, and, especially, Mitch Tebo as Lyndon Johnson, who—even in the early preview that I saw—dominated the stage just as his character dominated everyone and everything around him. 

The way of doing business in the political arena has shifted from the one-on-one back-room deal making at which President Johnson was so adept. The Great Society occupies the territory of such plays as Gore Vidal's The Best Man in depicting the office of the Presidency from another time and place. Who knows when we will see another personality come along with the strength, determination, and clout of Lyndon Johnson?  

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'Gore Vidal's The Best Man' Is a Fitting Tribute to Its Playwright

The candidates face off in 'Gore Vidal's The Best Man'

I am writing this review shortly after the lights of Broadway were dimmed in a salute to the late Gore Vidal—author, playwright, and raconteur—who passed away earlier this week at the age of 86. 

As it happens, I had a ticket to see the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man the day after he died. The performance, under the able hand of director Michael Wilson, was dedicated to the playwright, and I am pleased to report that this production is a most fitting tribute to the Mr. Vidal’s memory and to his talent.  

Any play that is tied to a specific era will carry with it a bit of stale air, but the current cast, which includes several replacements since the show’s opening four months ago, burnishes every corner of this 1960 political melodrama so that it fairly gleams. 

The Best Man takes place during a presidential nominating convention, at a time when the selection of the party’s candidate was not the foregone conclusion it has become through the well-oiled primary election system. 

Enter the Schoenfeld Theatre, and it is as if you were a delegate to that convention.  As ushers wearing red, white, and blue beribboned straw hats lead you to your seat, you can see that the walls are festooned with bunting, placards, and posters, and there are television monitors suspended from the ceiling showing black-and-white images of the goings-on.

The audience can hear the sounds of speeches and of clapping and cheering that draw us in even before the play begins.  The convention takes place over three days, and at the start of each of the three acts, the sounds grow louder and more excited, helping us to feel the suspense of the battle among the three leading candidates.

The actual 1960 Democratic Convention—in which John Fitzgerald Kennedy emerged as the winner—is the first one that I can recall.  I was a young teenager at the time, and I remember being glued to the television, utterly fascinated with the entire process.  Vidal (who anointed himself a member of the Kennedy clan through a stepfather he had in common with Jacqueline Kennedy) clearly drew some of his plot elements from that convention, and it is the mix of history and an unfortunately prophetic vision of what the system has become in the years since then that continues to keep the play interesting. 

On the one hand, you have characters who bring to mind the charismatic Kennedy and the intellectual Adlai Stevenson, along with specific references to President Eisenhower, to his wife Mamie Eisenhower and even to Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge.   These references, among others, remind us of the place and time the play inhabits.  But there is also a great deal of political gamesmanship, deal brokering, backstabbing, mudslinging, and dirty tricks, all of which will be very familiar even to those who are too young to recall the “good old days.”

The assumption we are handed is that the nomination will go to one of two candidates, the young, dashing, and ambitious Senator Joseph Cantwell (John Stamos) for whom the ends always justify the means, or the former Secretary of State William Russell (John Larroquette), a serious statesman who is a reluctant player in the game of politics. 

Each of the two bears a piece of information about the other that may be enough to break the stalemate.  Cantwell has learned of his opponent’s one-time bout with mental illness, and Russell has information that the Senator may have had a homosexual relationship while serving in the military.  The difference here is that Cantwell relishes his weapon and has already prepared copies of the medical report to distribute to the delegates, while Russell really wants nothing to do with raising potential destructive personal information. 

As the two circle one another, a third major player is on hand—former President Art Hockstader (magnificently portrayed by James Earl Jones), whose endorsement both candidates are seeking. Hockstader, presumably modeled on Harry Truman, is gravely ill, but he will not give up one moment of the spotlight he is enjoying as long as he withholds his endorsement, and his glee is palpable during his meetings with the two frontrunners, even after he can no longer manage to stand up. 

These three gentlemen are fascinating to watch.  John Stamos and John Larroquette embrace their roles nearly as gloriously as Mr. Jones.  But this is not a three-character play;  there are 22 characters, each of whom contributes mightily to keeping things jumping, forestalling any mustiness that might otherwise have crept in. 

Mr. Stamos only recently stepped into the part of Senator Cantwell (replacing Eric McCormack), and he has made it his own by supplying equal parts of boyish charm and Machiavellian underhandedness.  He is joined by three other newcomers:  Kristin Davis, replacing Kerry Butler and making an auspicious Broadway debut, as Cantwell’s ebullient wife; Cybill Shepherd, replacing Candice Bergen as Russell’s estranged wife and reluctant political partner; and Elizabeth Ashley as Sue-Ellen Gamadge, leader of the Women’s Division. 

Ms. Shepherd has quickly found her way into an underwritten part as a politico wife who gradually comes to embrace her public duties, and Ms. Davis and Ms. Ashley (who has the daunting privilege of following Angela Lansbury), absolutely shine in their respective roles.  Ms. Ashley, in particular, seems to have been born to play the role of the honey-toned yet razor-sharp piece of work that is Sue-Ellen Gamadge, who greets Cybill Shepherd’s character (who, after all, may wind up being First Lady) with these charming words:     

You…couldn’t…look…better!  I mean it!  
 I like the whole thing…especially the 
 naturally gray hair.

Even in the smaller roles, you get to see such talented actors as Mark Blum as Russell’s frustrated campaign manager, Dakin Matthews as a backslapping Southern senator, and the always-wonderful Jefferson Mays as the craven supplier of the gossip about Senator Cantwell’s alleged sexual misconduct. 

I’m not going to argue that The Best Man is the find of the century, but there is nothing also-ran about its Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Play (it lost to Death of a Salesman).  Smart directing by Michael Wilson and a top-notch company of actors makes it a sure-fire audience pleaser that I am happy to recommend without reservation.  

If you crave more of ProfMiller, check out the column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.  Recent reviews include "How Deep Is The Ocean?," "Triassic Parq The Musical," and "Closer Than Ever."