The Great Society Opens on Broadway

The Great Society, the follow-up to Robert Schenkkan's 2014 Tony-winning play All the Way, opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on October 1.

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 reelection 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.

Directed by Bill Rauch, The Great Society is led by Brian Cox as LBJ, alongside Grantham Coleman as Martin Luther King Jr., 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.