Broadway Gets Ready for The Great Society, Starring Brian Cox as LBJ

The cast of Robert Schenkkan's The Great Society, the sequel to his Tony-winning All the Way, met the press on August 20. Directed by Bill Rauch, the drama will play the Vivian Beaumont Theater beginning Friday, September 6, with opening night set for October 1.

The 19-member ensemble company will be led by Brian Cox as Lyndon B. Johnson and Grantham Coleman as Martin Luther King Jr., alongside Marc Kudisch as Richard J. Daley, Bryce Pinkham as Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Frank Wood as Senator Everett Dirksen, Gordon Clapp as J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Thomas as Hubert Humphrey.

Completing the cast are 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, Christopher Livingston as James Bevel, Angela Pierce as Pat Nixon, Matthew Rauch as Robert McNamara, Nikkole Salter as Coretta Scott King, Tramell Tillman as Bob Moses, and Ted Deasy and Robyn Kerr in the ensemble.

The creative team includes David Korins (sets), Linda Cho (costumes), David Weiner (lights), Paul James Prendergast (composer, sound), Victoria Sagady (projections)

Capturing President Lyndon B. Johnson's attempts to build a just society for all, The Great Society follows his triumph in a landslide election to the agonizing decision not to run for re-election just three years later. It was 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 escalation of the Vietnam War, and the creation of some of the greatest social programs America has ever known.