LBJ or a remarkable character actor?

In my last post I talked about TV actors on Stage. That post was originally inspired by my most recent visit to NYC to see Sir Kenneth Branagh in his masterful production of Macbeth. (See post here) With the extra time on my hands that weekend, I also thought to catch a production of Of Mice and Men. However, the week before my visit Bryan Cranston won the Tony for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for his portrayal of Lyndon B. Johnson in All the Way.

An original play with the original cast nearly always trumps anything. A last minute visit to the TKTS booth got me a fourth row seat.

To say I was blown away is an understatement. It was a remarkable play, an amazing cast, with balletic staging and stellar production. But most of all I instantly became a fan of Bryan Cranston. And I didn’t really even know who he was.

Both of these people are the same guy… really.

I knew he was in some wacky sitcom and in a highly praised cable drama about drugs but I don’t really watch sitcoms, particularly ones that revolve around a wacky family; and I don’t have cable, so I don’t have much opportunity to watch the latest “unmissable” drama. So, in my mind he didn’t actually exist until he took a giant leap to star in an original Broadway play.

Now that I’m a fan, I have to see everything else he had done. As of this post I am almost done with Season 3 of Breaking Bad and I started watching Malcolm in the Middle as well. Interestingly enough, the two characters he portrays are very similar. Right down to their tighty-whitey underwear.

Ha, no I’m just kidding… the man is a chameleon. I can’t believe all the stuff he has been in over the years and he just drifts through invisibly. In All The Way, LBJ commanded the stage, menacingly tall and overly eccentric. At the end of the play (spoiler alert!) he wins the election and the curtain drops down. Seconds later as it rises, we see the cast lined up for their bows… and suddenly Bryan Cranston appears. The stoop is gone, the face relaxed… and we realize how much effortless effort had been expended to create that character.

 [Video from PBS Newshour]

It’s been announced that HBO has purchased the rights to the play and is planning on a film version. It will be great for people to see what Cranston has done with LBJ, but it will be nothing like the stage play. A stage is a small space of infinity. Time and place mean nothing, and yet can speak volumes. Two scenes stand out for me in this production. First, as Johnson makes a decision about a police action in Vietnam, the body of one of the Freedom Summer volunteers is dug up and laid at his feet. Johnson was in the White House, the body was dug out of an earthen dam in Mississippi. But on this stage, they are one and the same place. The symbolism is clear and stunning.

My favorite scene however, was concerning Johnson’s father/son relationship with his aide Walter Jenkins played by Christopher Liam Moore. Once again, time and space are overlapped as Jenkins is arrested and sent to a mental hospital and LBJ frets in his office. As they both play out their sadness and dismay at the situation, they both turn at the same time and stand toe-to-toe, one looming large over the other. It still breaks my heart a little just thinking about it.