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Regional Reviews: Seattle

All the Way
Seattle Repertory Theatre

Also see David's reviews of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Mary Poppins and Our Gay Apparel


Jack Willis and Richard Elmore
All the Way, the acclaimed 2014 Tony Award winning play by Robert Schenkkan, may seem an unlikely holiday season offering from the nationally acclaimed Seattle Repertory Theatre, but this production is the original which Oregon Shakespeare Festival commissioned from the playwright starring Jack Willis as President Lyndon Baines Johnson and many of his fellow actors from that staging, smashingly directed by Bill Rauch, who also helmed the Broadway staging. As such, it was mostly sold out pre-opening, and is the biggest hit in SRT history (in collaboration with OSF).

The play begins in the aftermath of JFK's assassination and LBJ's becoming president in November 1963, and concludes with LBJ's landslide reelection against Barry Goldwater in November 1964. There is not a dull moment in this riveting docudrama, and Willis is colorful, commanding, hilarious, and human at the center of it all. Much of the play deals with LBJ's efforts to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed by Congress.

There are plenty of great roles to go around and all are handled expertly, with Kenajuan Bentley's eloquent yet flawed and human Reverend Martin Luther King key among them. Peter Frechette gets to the core of Hubert Humphrey, the ultimate vice-president on Johnson's winning team who endures much disdain from LBJ in the process. Danforth Comins is touching and sympathetic as Walter Jenkins, Johnson's longtime aide whom LBJ forsakes when a morals controversy involving Jenkins becomes public. Richard Elmore makes an intriguing J. Edgar Hoover, Michael Winters a formidable yet gentlemanly adversary as Senator Richard Russell, and Jonathan Haugen gives a darkly humorous interpretation of colorful, bigoted Alabama Governor George Wallace. The ladies behind these men are barely glimpsed—even the colorful Lady Bird Johnson (Terri McMahon) is given shorty shrift—but they really aren't essential to the telling of this part of Johnson's story.

Christopher Acebo's set takes us convincingly behind the closed doors where these politicos were making decisions that affected us all, abetted by a fine lighting design by David Weiner, and on the money costume design by Deborah M. Dryden. Projection and video design by Shawn Sagady helps nail the look of a world most of us (including my 7-year-old self) only saw on the evening news and in black and white.

With so much of the LBJ presidency left to cover, I fervently look forward to this production's companion piece, The Great Society, which begins previews December 5, 2014, and will alternate with selected performances of All The Way.

All The Way runs through January 1, 2015, in the Bagley Wright at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle Center. For more information, visit www.seattlerep.org.


Photo: Jenny Graham

- David Edward Hughes