Tickets are now on sale to see Emmy and two-time Olivier Award winner Brian Cox star as Lyndon B. Johnson in the Broadway premiere of The Great Society at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater.
Playwright Robert Schenkkan returns to the Great White Way with this second play, celebrating LBJ's presidential legacy. This new work accompanies Schenkkan’s Tony Award-winning All The Way, which saw Bryan Cranston win his first Tony for "Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play" back in 2014 for his performance as the 1960s American president.
All The Way played the Neil Simon Theatre from February 10 through June 29, 2014, taking home the Tony Award for “Best Play.”
This production actually marks Schenkkan’s third Broadway outing as a playwright. In the fall of 1993, he made his Broadway debut as a writer with The Kentucky Cycle, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992 and led to his first Tony Award nomination for “Best Play” in 1994.
Taking the reins from Bryan Cranston and carrying the LBJ baton into The Great Society, Brian Cox is also no stranger to the Great White Way, of course. Having made his Broadway debut back in February 1985 in Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, he has gone on to make waves in the theatre with his performances in Yasmina Reza’s Art in 1998, Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll in 2007, and Jason Miller’s That Championship Season in 2011. A native of Dundee, Scotland, he also boasts a formidable résumé, when it comes to the UK stage. A two-time Olivier Award winner in his own right, he has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, alongside other esteemed establishments around the UK. He is one of the true veterans of the theatre with an intimidating stage presence more than capable of living up to the powerful figure of LBJ.
The Great Society depicts a crucial era in American history – including the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and the atrocities committed in Vietnam – and promises great writing, great acting and great drama.
(Photo courtesy of Polk & Co.)
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About 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 three years later. In 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.
The Great Society CAST AND CREATIVE
By:
Robert Schenkkan
Producer:
Jeffrey Richards and Louise Gund
Director:
Bill Rauch
Lighting:
David Weiner
Sound:
Paul James Prendergast
Design:
David Korins
Costume:
Linda Cho
Cast list:
Brian Cox (as Lyndon B. Johnson), Gordon Clapp (as J. Edgar Hoover), Grantham Coleman (as Martin Luther King Jr.), Marchánt Davis (as Stokely Carmichael), Brian Dykstra (as Adam Walinsky), Barbara Garrick (as Ladybird Johnson), David Garrison (as Richard Nixon), Ty Jones (as Reverend Ralph Abernathy), Marc Kudisch (as Richard J. Daley), Christopher Livingston (as James Bevel), Angela Pierce (as Pat Nixon), Bryce Pinkham (as Senator Robert F. Kennedy), Matthew Rauch (as Robert McNamara), Nikkole Salter (as Coretta Scott King), Richard Thomas (as Hubert Humphrey), Tramell Tillman (as Bob Moses), and Frank Wood (as Senator Everett Dirksen)
Other info:
Projections by Victoria Sagady
Vivian Beaumont Theater - Lincoln Center Theater
Address:
50 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023
Nearest subway station:
66th Street - Lincoln Center station
The Great Society Next performances
Latest The Great Society News & Features
August 13, 2019
Producers of the upcoming Broadway premiere of The Great Society, scheduled to play the Vivian Beaumont Theater from September 6 through November 30, 2019, with an official opening on October 1, have now revealed complete casting.
July 19, 2019
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Robert Schenkkan’s new play The Great Society, the second of his two dramas about the legacy of Lyndon B. Johnson, will open on Broadway for a limited 12-week engagement at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in September. Beginning previews on September 6, the play will be directed by Bill Rauch and star Emmy Award winner Brian Cox as Lyndon B. Johnson, Tony Award nominees Marc Kudisch and Richard Thomas as Richard J Daley and Hubert Humphrey, respectively, and Grantham Coleman in his Broadway debut as Martin Luther King Jr.