Michael Riedel

Michael Riedel

Theater

All eyes on Bryan Cranston’s turn as LBJ in Boston

Here’s one to watch: “All the Way,” a new play about Lyndon Johnson starring three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston, is almost sold out in Boston, where it begins performances this week at the American Repertory Theater.

New York producers who have read the script are circling the production, and if the reviews are good — and if Cranston’s schedule allows — “All the Way” could be a surprise entry in the spring frenzy on Broadway.

The play is by Robert Schenkkan, who won a Pulitzer in 1992 for his nine-hour epic “The Kentucky Cycle” but then drifted into television and movies. (He wrote the sophisticated screenplay for “The Quiet American,” starring Michael Caine.)

Cranston, whose popularity these days from “Breaking Bad” is almost at James Gandolfini levels, plays LBJ, a character who, in “All the Way,” is at once a Shakespearean villain and hero.

The play is set during the 12 months between President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, President Johnson’s legacy.

Schenkkan captures the LBJ of Robert Caro’s magisterial biographies. To get his way, Johnson bullies, threatens, cajoles and seduces Capitol Hill politicians. He flouts ethics but, at the same time, stands for noble causes. Schenkkan has said he sees Johnson as a “tragic figure.”

My spies tell me Cranston’s mastered “the Johnson Treatment.” LBJ was a big man, and when he was strong-arming someone, he would lean into them and, it was said, spit in their face while talking.

A senator once described the Johnson Treatment as “having a large St. Bernard licking your face and pawing you all over.”

The production, directed by Bill Rauch, has a top-notch cast, including Brandon J. Dirden as Martin Luther King Jr., Michael McKean as J. Edgar Hoover and Reed Birney as Hubert Humphrey.

Historical political drama is the kind of thing British writers do extremely well, starting with Shakespeare — “Richard III,” “Henry V,” “Richard II.”

David Hare wrote the gripping “Stuff Happens,” about the build-up to the war in Iraq, and Peter Morgan had a Broadway smash with “Frost/Nixon.”

One of my favorites is Howard Brenton’s “Never So Good,” a sweeping drama about the life and times of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.

With the exception of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” American writers tend to shy away from historical drama. But Schenkkan tackled it in a big way with “The Kentucky Cycle,” an epic about the settling of the American West.

Lyndon Johnson is an excellent subject for a rich, meaty political drama. He’s such a powerful character, Schenkkan’s already at work on a sequel — “The Great Society” — which chronicles LBJ’s downfall as a result of the Vietnam War.

But first things first: “All the Way” runs Friday to Oct. 12.

Look for plenty of Broadway bigwigs (such as myself!) on the Boston shuttle in the coming weeks.

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The advance for “Betrayal,” starring Daniel Craig, has hit $10 million. Scalpers are said to be getting $1,250 for tickets to the first preview on Oct. 1. At this rate, “Betrayal” is likely to out-gross “Lucky Guy.”

Which means Craig will beat Tom Hanks as the biggest box-office draw in a nonmusical play.

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Producer Elizabeth I. McCann did a little research for me and discovered that the first person for whom Broadway dimmed its lights was Gertrude Lawrence, who died in 1952 while starring in “The King and I.”

The plan was to dim the lights only at the theater where the show was running. But at the last minute, the theater owners decided all the lights should go out. Lawrence was buried in the dress she wore for “Shall We Dance?”