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“I feel like a catfish biting into a fat, juicy worm and finding a sharp hook in my jaw,” says Lyndon B. Johnson, as the 34th president reflects on the foreign and domestic battles he faces after winning his second term, in Robert Schenkkan’s The Great Society, a Dallas Theater Center co-production with Houston’s Alley Theatre, where it just finished a successful run.

DTC Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty wrangles this epic, history-packed play with 18 actors playing some 40 roles at a riveting horse-race pace at the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Wyly Theatre. Once you get in the saddle, you want to go the distance with this profane, ego-driven president, who will lie, cheat and step on people’s feet to win his War on Poverty and get his Medicare Act passed. But when he tries to bluster and bluff his way through the escalating costs and body counts of the Vietnam war, his previously successful tactics drag him into the dirt.

The Great Society is Schenkkan’s sequel to All the Way, the Tony-winning drama celebrating Johnson’s 11-month tenure as the “accidental president” with his arm-twisting, wheeler-dealer tactics in getting the Civil Rights Act passed, a critical and audience success in DTC’s 2016 production. To read more, click here.

Completing the cycle that began with the 2016 Dallas Theater Center/Alley Theatre co-production of All the Way, The Great Society depicts the tumultuous final four years of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency. And “tumultuous” is putting it lightly, as there is seemingly no moment of peace for LBJ throughout the play as he wrestles with how to handle civil rights struggles, the escalating Vietnam War, and more. Brandon Potter reprises his role as Johnson, going head-to-head with a series of political figures. They include Martin Luther King, Jr. (the returning Shawn Hamilton), who pushes Johnson to keep his word on supporting voting rights; Sen. Bobby Kennedy (Jay Sullivan), a fellow Democrat with whom he has a testy relationship; Gov. George Wallace (Chris Hury), who seems unable or unwilling to help with racial unrest in Alabama; and many more. As with All the Way, the audience is thrust into the middle of an ongoing story, as playwright Robert Schenkkan assumes we have a certain familiarity with 1960s U.S. history. Instead of leading us by the nose through the events of the era, he provides a certain number of cultural touchstones while also diving deep into the debates LBJ had with a variety of people. It takes a few scenes to catch up, but once the play gets going under Kevin Moriarty's direction, it moves like a freight train. To read more, click here.

Arena Stage has brought Washington many plays that are marginally political, but its latest Washington premiere — of Robert Schenkkan's The Great Society — is unabashedly, completely political, and one of the finest dramas Arena has produced in recent years. A follow-up to his play All the Way, which told the story of Lyndon Johnson's unexpected appointment as president immediately after the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, The Great Society makes clear the struggles Johnson went through during his second term. To read more, click here.

At the Washington premiere of “The Great Society,” a play about President Lyndon B. Johnson, there were plenty of  political plot twists happening offstage.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who received Arena Stage’s American Voice Award for her advocacy of the arts and arts education, was honored after Thursday night’s show. And thanks to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tying up the spending bill, prompting a partial government shutdown for a few hours overnight, she was able to actually watch the entire play without running out early and heading to the Hill for a vote. To read more, click here.