Hey! Hey! LBJ!

NEAR the end of “All The Way”—a play about Lyndon Johnson that has sold out its current run in Cambridge, Massachusetts—the actor playing LBJ asks if the audience is feeling squeamish. It is a reasonable question given the preceding three hours, charting Johnson’s first year in the Oval Office. The “accidental president” created by John Kennedy’s assassination is shown snarling, bullying and flattering his way to a near-miracle, the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act despite fierce opposition in Congress. At the same time, the audience sees him marching towards tragedy, building a case for war in Vietnam with ginned-up intelligence and the suppression of awkward facts.