Oregon Shakespeare Festival

All the Way Heading to Broadway

The LBJ-MLK drama All the Way, which began as a commissioned play by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is heading to Broadway. It's the American Repertory Theater's production in Cambridge, Mass., starring Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad, that is transferring to New York. The production, which sold out its entire run even before previews began, is directed by Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Bill Rauch, who initially mounted the play at OSF last year.

Written by Robert Schenkkan, All the Way was commissioned by OSF through its American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle. It premiered at OSF in July 2012 and featured Jack Willis as President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kenajuan Bentley as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Peter Frechette as Hubert H. Humphrey. The production was a huge success with critics and audiences and ran at 98 percent of capacity. Shakespeareances.com selected the production as its number one non-Shakespearean theatrical moment of 2012.

OSF is currently developing Schenkkan's The Great Society, which continues the Johnson story. The Great Society was commissioned by Seattle Repertory Theatre and will premiere at OSF July 23, 2014, also under the direction of Rauch.

“At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, we had a dream of creating work that spoke to the urgent issues of today by dramatizing moments of change in American history," Rauch said in a press release. "The fact that Robert's brilliant play, developed and premiered in Ashland and further developed at A.R.T., will be reaching even more audiences in New York is deeply meaningful and moving to all of us.”

The play's Broadway home and dates are yet to be determined.

October 23, 2013

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