Good Bobby

The play takes a hiatus following the December 14 performance, and re-opens January 9.

Good Bobby is what Joseph Kennedy, Sr. called his son Robert Francis Kennedy when Bobby obeyed his father. But more often than not, Bobby was called upon to serve the public welfare rather than private interests. So he had to be everybody’s Good Bobby, not just his dad’s.
Brian Lee Franklin portrays Robert F. Kennedy. He looks like RFK, he sounds like RFK, but wisely does not settle for simple impersonation, but inhabits the historical character as a fully dimensional, flesh-and-blood human being.
The Kennedys have been the closest to what America might have considered to be a royal political family. Joe and others expected less of Bobby than they did of RFK’s older brothers, Joe, Jr. and Jack. Bobby continually managed to confound people by surpassing their expectations, and also his own: investigating Jimmy Hoffa and corruption in the labor unions; ramrodding Jack’s successful campaign for the Presidency; serving as a hard-charging, crime-busting Attorney General; facilitating his brother’s sometimes ethically questionable execution of foreign policy; standing up to attempted blackmail of the Kennedys by J. Edgar Hoover; serving a new President after his brother’s assassination; realizing his personal ambitions of public service as the Senator of New York; making his own run for the Presidency in ’68.In the new play Good Bobby, RFK is no plaster saint. A markedly flawed individual, his achievements are the more impressive because of what he overcomes.