In Mamet’s play, Thomas has been accused of raping a Black woman. It is up to his three lawyers to defend their wealthy client.

For this reading, Ed O’Neill takes on the role originally played on Broadway by James Spader. Stith takes on the role originally played by Kerry Washington. Both Spader and Washington made their Broadway debuts in Race.

The play, which runs 1 hour and 40 minutes, played 297 performances on Broadway after 23 previews. Mamet directed Race. Phylicia Rashad directs this reading.

Ben Brantley, writing in the New York Times, gave the play a mixed review. Nonetheless, he did say, “Though the first act of Race is similarly propelled by barbed one-liners, its second act offers reassuring evidence of Mr. Mamet’s scalpel-edged intelligence. And the issues it raises, particularly on the ethnic varieties of shame and the universal nature of guilt, should offer ample nutrition for many a post-theater dinner conversation.”

Race will become available at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT on October 29th and remain available through November 2nd at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM EST. Tickets are $5 and available from TodayTix. Proceeds from tickets sales will be donated to The Actors Fund.

Photo: Playwright David Mamet (Courtesy MasterClass.com)

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All the Way depicted Johnson up to and immediately after President Kennedy’s assassination. The Great Society will follow Johnson as he begins his administration, navigates turmoil at home and the growing war in Vietnam. The play follows Johnson up to his decision not to run for re-election.

Schenkkan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Kentucky Cycle in 1992, has spent a lot of time working and re-working The Great Society. There have been at least six productions of the play prior to its New York opening. Bill Rauch, who also directed All the Way, helmsThe Great Society.

Starring as Johnson is Brian Cox (currently seen in HBO’s Succession). Richard Thomas (The Americans) plays Hubert Humphrey. Grantham Colman, who appeared in Choir Boy at the Geffen Playhouse, plays Martin Luther King, Jr. Marc Kudisch (Assassins) plays Richard J. Daley. Bryce Pinkham (A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder) plays Robert Kennedy. Frank Wood, most recently seen in Network on Broadway, plays Everett Dirksen. The rest of the sizable cast includes Gordon Clapp, Marchánt Davis, Brian Dykstra, Barbara Garrick, David Garrison, Ty Jones, Christopher Livingston, Angela Pierce, Matthew Rauch, Nikkole Salter, Tramell Tillman, Ted Deasy and Robyn Kerr.

In a New York Times story about the play coming to Broadway, Schenkkan is quoted as saying about the difference between his two plays, “All the Way is a drama and The Great Society is a tragedy.”

With these two plays and Robert Caro’s detailed study of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th President is getting more than his share of attention these days.

The official opening night for The Great Society is October 1st. The play will run through November 30th.

For tickets go here.

This post will be updated once production photos have been released.

The post The Great Society appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“The reason I wrote the play in the first place,” Wright says, “was to put forth the idea that peace is possible. Camp David showed it’s possible. These men, at a time of great turbulence, got together and forged peace, and it hasn’t been violated since they signed that paper. We lose sight of that.”

At the time of our conversation, the company was working on a 55^th version of the play, even though it has already been produced at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. “The drama was the challenge in this,” Wright reveals. “I am a reporter. I know how to dig out the facts. When the Arena approached me, I said I’d have to deal with it the way I would a book or a New Yorker article. That was the easy part. The harder part was figuring out how many characters are there, what are the relationships, and how do I bridge fact with imagination.”

Wright had more than fact. He had cooperation from Carter. “I thought I knew something about Carter,” he says. “I had an opinion about him. All the weaknesses pointed out in his character, his micromanaging, and his refusal to make any concession to political necessity—those are the things that brought him down in many respects, yet at Camp David, they were strengths he put to good use. I came away with a tremendous amount of respect for him and a profound sense of gratitude for what he accomplished there.”

Despite the historic summit, the current state of affairs in the Middle East has Wright feeling unsure about amicable solutions. “It may be the settlements in the West Bank have gone so far that it will be very difficult to create a second state there,” he says. “You have to have people who are willing to make the domestic sacrifices to achieve something like Camp David. Begin and Sadat and Carter were unique and determined and persistent. And they had a vision. Those qualities are all part of what goes together to make the character of a peacemaker.”

Photo Credit: Jim Cox

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