The lights go up on stage at Mariemont Players’ All The Way and an onscreen projection interrupts the show with a special news bulletin from Nov. 22, 1963. President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated in Dallas. The stage sits silent for a moment. Then the lights go up on now-President Lyndon B. Johnson, JFK’s vice president who has had to take the power he insists he never wanted. But he plans to use it to support the civil rights movement — and get elected president in his own right in November 1964.
All The Way follows Johnson and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 as it makes its arduous journey toward congressional passage to end state-sanctioned segregation — then the norm in the South. During Johnson’s first year in office as an “accidental president,” he campaigns vigorously to get elected in 1964 as president.
But it’s tricky. As a Southern (Texas) Democrat who supports the Civil Rights Act, he worries that the South — then a stronghold for Democrats — will turn against the national party because the latter supports civil rights. Johnson wants to keep it Democrat, and worries that if he loses it, the Republicans might win the election. But he also wants to do the right thing.
As Johnson, actor A.J. Ford becomes increasingly presidential as the Mariemont Players’ All The Way progresses. Yet Ford also captures the aggressive insecurity of a man fighting for what he believes is right, who feels abandoned as various political interests pursue their own conflicting goals. He is particularly worried that the pro-civil-rights Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party is threatening to challenge the conservative Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic convention, which could threaten party unity.
All The Way also follows civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight to bring unity to the cause. The play shows how the civil rights movement incorporated several different advocacy groups who favored different tactics, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. As King, actor Derek Snow does a solid job of capturing the complexities facing a leader bringing together myriad valid but conflicting viewpoints.
All The Way was written by Robert Schenkkan and had its premiere in Oregon in 2012. It moved to Broadway in 2014, with Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as Johnson. He won a Tony for his performance.
At Mariemont Players, the play is a dry and earnest portrayal of politics, and it mostly succeeds at its mission. There are one or two West Wing-like walk-and-talk scenes thrown in by director Ed Cohen that pay nice homage to past great political dramas, and they also heighten the play’s sense of urgency. However, with its dense subject material and the political jargon that’s thrown around so casually by the characters, All The Way can be difficult to keep up with. At times it felt a bit unfocused.
At the performance seen for this review, some cast members stumbled over their lines or forgot them altogether, which made it difficult to keep the audience engaged in an already dense show. The production was aided, however, by the projections in the back of the stage. Footage from the 1960s was projected directly over the president’s Oval Office desk.
Perhaps the most successful device employed in the projections was the countdown that displayed the decreasing number of days left before the 1964 presidential election. This element, designed by Dan Dermody and Michael Morehead, created mounting pressure and heightened the sense of urgency as the election looms.
The show feels eerily familiar in its presentation of the varying arguments surrounding civil rights. Phrases about “overstepping the Constitution” and the thin arguments on behalf of “states’ rights” fly out of the mouths of Southern opponents with ease. It’s no wonder the Mariemont Players chose this show for the 2017-18 season.
The production ends with LBJ’s historic landslide victory, but takes a moment to show us each presidential election that followed. It breaks down how individual states voted, showing that Southern states increasingly turned against Democrats. It’s an eerie note to end on, but quite a powerful one.
All The Way is onstage at Mariemont Players (4101 Walton Creek Road, Mariemont) through July 29. Tickets/more info: mariemontplayers.com.
This article appears in Jul 11-18, 2018.