An Arm-Twister in the Oval Office - The New York Times
September 25, 2013 THEATER REVIEW An Arm-Twister in the Oval Office
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The crowds excitedly filing in to the American Repertory Theater here are not, I am willing to bet, panting at the prospect of hearing words like “filibuster” and “cloture” tossed into their laps. Nor are they eager to watch politicians fulminating and pontificating in front of microphones. For such diversions, after all, we have cable news, and with the government slouching toward yet another partisan smackdown, it’s showtime 24/7.
No, the reason “All the Way,” a new historical drama by Robert Schenkkan (“The Kentucky Cycle”), has sold out its entire run has everything to do with the man who spends much of the evening in an oval-shaped space at center stage. Bryan Cranston, who racked up three Emmys as the chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin in the obsessively adored cable series “Breaking Bad,” stars as President Lyndon Baines Johnson, fighting to assert himself as a figure of authority, both moral and political, in the tumultuous months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
To immediately address the question of Mr. Cranston’s own authority: yes, onstage he cuts a vigorous, imposing figure as L.B.J., employing a drawl as wide as the Rio Grande as the new president backslaps and backstabs his way through the rough waters of a Washington that, in its deep divisions, bears a depressing resemblance to our own.
Mr. Cranston’s Johnson glitters with an almost salacious ruthlessness when he senses a chance to do a little arm-twisting to lock down another vote for a bill he wants passed. And in Mr. Schenkkan’s sharply outlined portrait, Johnson spouts down-home truths, Southern-fried parables and the occasional blue tale like a geyser gushing oil in his native Texas. Mr. Cranston delivers them all with the jovial ease of a man spinning yarns to his buddies on the front porch. (Still, after the umpteenth such serving of corn pone, I began to wonder how Johnson ever found time to do any actual politicking.)
This winning star turn can go only so far, however, to give dramatic thrust to Mr. Schenkkan’s play, which is directed by Bill Rauch, the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where the play had its premiere (without Mr. Cranston) last year. “All the Way” sprawls across three hours of stage time as it covers an imposingly wide swath of territory.
Concentrating on two parallel story lines — Johnson’s fight to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his maneuvering to secure a full term as president — the play dangles more subplots than a Congressional bill has earmarks: the sordid attempts by J. Edgar Hoover (Michael McKean) to discredit the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Brandon J. Dirden); the infamous killing of three young men seeking to register black voters in Mississippi; the battle to seat black delegates from Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention that followed; and even comparatively minor incidents like the arrest of Johnson’s longtime aide-de-camp, Walter Jenkins (Christopher Liam Moore), for having sex in a men’s room.
http://theater.nytimes.com/...-the-way-stars-bryan-cranston-as-lyndon-b-johnson.html?ref=theater&_r=0&pagewanted=print[9/26/2013 10:31:22 AM] An Arm-Twister in the Oval Office - The New York Times
“All the Way” works just fine as a PowerPoint lesson in political history, but it ultimately accrues minimal dramatic momentum. (The polished wooden set by Christopher Acebo is designed to suggest a Congressional chamber.) For policy wonks with an avid interest in the backroom deal making that doesn’t turn up on C-Span, the play will offer plenty to chew on. And yet for all its admirable attention to the complex currents of the period it covers, the wide focus drains the play of the narrative drive that makes for engrossing theater. (A countdown clock, noting the number of days to the presidential election, cannot really engender much suspense, since most in the audience will know how that contest ended.)
The play begins in the hours immediately after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 as Johnson is winging toward Washington on Air Force One. He knows he has to hit the tarmac running: the next election is less than a year away, and after three years of being virtually powerless as Kennedy’s vice president, Johnson needs to quickly show that he has the leadership qualities necessary to bring the country through a troubled time.
Kennedy had already sent the civil rights bill to Congress, where its foes were confidently expecting to gut it, as they had another such bill in 1957, when Johnson was the Senate majority leader, or to let it die. Johnson seizes on the bill as a necessary means both to win popular approval — the country was largely in favor of it — and to win over the Kennedy liberals who never believed in Johnson’s bona fides on the issue. Mr. Schenkkan shows him working the phones relentlessly when he’s not working over a stubborn foe in person, the smiling mask of the good ol’ boy slipping frequently to reveal a bared-tooth snarl.
Mr. Rauch has assembled a first-rate supporting cast to fill out the more than 40 roles in the play, with most actors playing two or three parts (sometimes a little confusingly). Among the standouts: Mr. McKean oozing bland, oily menace as Hoover; Reed Birney as a put upon but loyal Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Johnson dispatches to do much of his behind-the-scenes politicking, holding out the promise of a vice-presidential slot; Dakin Matthews as Senator Richard B. Russell Jr., Democrat of Georgia, an ardent segregationist whom Johnson is shown using all his wiles to bring around; and William Jackson Harper as a doggedly determined Stokely Carmichael, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in scenes that depict the internecine warfare among the several black-led groups fighting for civil rights.
Fine though the acting is throughout, the abundance of characters means that few have any time to be explored in much depth. Even Johnson does not have the layers of shading that I had hoped for. You come away from Mr. Schenkkan’s play with admiration for Johnson’s peerless political skills, his ability to bend a recalcitrant Congress to his will by means both subtle and blunt, but with little sense of where he truly stood, morally, on the great issues of the day. (In the traffic jam of the play’s dense plot, the Great Society project gets little more than a couple of muted toots on the horn.) Mr. Schenkkan’s portrait leaves the impression that even when Johnson had ascended to the presidency, his primary interest was securing power for his own sake, a portrait at odds with the more complicated, humane one drawn by Robert A. Caro in his majestic, four-volumes-and- counting biography of Johnson.
Theater rooted in history always faces a fundamental problem. Hew too closely to the complicated crosscurrents of the story and you risk shapelessness; take too many liberties in streamlining the drama and you’re no longer in the realm of fact. With the exception of his comparatively unshaded portrait of Johnson, Mr. Schenkkan comes down firmly on the side of complexity, which may be the honorable path, but not necessarily the more rewarding one for the audience.
http://theater.nytimes.com/...-the-way-stars-bryan-cranston-as-lyndon-b-johnson.html?ref=theater&_r=0&pagewanted=print[9/26/2013 10:31:22 AM] An Arm-Twister in the Oval Office - The New York Times
All the Way
By Robert Schenkkan; directed by Bill Rauch; sets by Christopher Acebo; costumes by Deborah M. Dryden; lighting by Jane Cox; music and sound by Paul James Prendergast; projections by Shawn Sagady; dramaturge, Tom Bryant; dialect coach, Rebecca Clark Carey; associate director, Emily Sophia Knapp; production stage manager, Matthew Farrell. Presented by American Repertory Theater, Diane Paulus, artistic director. At the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass.; (617) 547-8300; americanrepertorytheater.org. Through Oct. 12. Running time: 3 hours.
WITH: Bryan Cranston (President Lyndon Baines Johnson), Betsy Aidem (Lady Bird Johnson/Katharine Graham/Rep. Katharine S. George), Christopher Liam Moore (Walter Jenkins/Rep. William Colmer), Susannah Schulman (Secretary/Lurleen Wallace/Muriel Humphrey), Reed Birney (Senator Hubert H. Humphrey/Senator Strom Thurmond), Dakin Matthews (Senator Richard B. Russell Jr./Rep. Emanuel Celler/Jim Martin), Michael McKean (J. Edgar Hoover/Senator Robert C. Byrd), Arnie Burton (Robert McNamara/Senator James O. Eastland/Rep. William Moore/Gov. Paul B. Johnson), Brandon J. Dirden (the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.), J. Bernard Calloway (the Rev. Ralph Abernathy), Ethan Phillips (Stanley Levison/Rep. John McCormack/Seymore Trammell/the Rev. Edwin King), William Jackson Harper (James Harrison/Stokely Carmichael), Richard Poe (Cartha DeLoach/Rep. Howard Smith/ Senator Everett M. Dirksen/Gov. Carl Sanders), Crystal A. Dickinson (Coretta Scott King/Fannie Lou Hamer), Dan Butler (Gov. George Wallace/Rep. James Corman/Senator Mike J. Mansfield/Walter Reuther), Peter Jay Fernandez (Roy Wilkins/Shoeshiner/Aaron Henry) and Eric Lenox Abrams (Bob Moses/David Dennis).
http://theater.nytimes.com/...-the-way-stars-bryan-cranston-as-lyndon-b-johnson.html?ref=theater&_r=0&pagewanted=print[9/26/2013 10:31:22 AM] Marta Heflin, Actor, Dies at 68 - Waif Seen in Altman Films - NYTimes.com
September 25, 2013 Marta Heflin, Actor, Dies at 68; Waif Seen in Altman Films By PAUL VITELLO Marta Heflin, an actress who appeared in New York stage musicals like “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Hair” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” in the 1960s and ’70s, and later in a string of Robert Altman movies that capitalized on her waifishness, died on Sept. 18 in Manhattan. She was 68. A paid death announcement in The New York Times on Sunday said she had died after a long illness. No further details were given.
Ms. Heflin was best known for her featured roles in Mr. Altman’s 1979 romantic comedy, “A Perfect Couple,” and his 1982 film of Ed Graczyk’s play, “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” with an ensemble cast that included Sandy Dennis, Kathy Bates, Karen Black and Cher. She was in the Broadway production, which Mr. Altman directed as well, that same year.
Mr. Altman said in interviews that Ms. Heflin’s unconventional, sometimes awkward beauty lent authority to her portrayal of average people in both films.
In “Come Back,” she played a beleaguered character, pregnant for the seventh time, attending the reunion of a James Dean fan club 20 years after the actor’s death. In “A Perfect Couple,” she was a ragamuffin singer who, while living with a rock band, meets a paunchy middle-aged man (Paul Dooley) through a dating service and falls in love.
Ms. Heflin had small supporting roles in Frank Pierson’s remake of “A Star Is Born” (1976), starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; “A Wedding” (1978), Mr. Altman’s comedy of manners; and Martin Scorsese’s “King of Comedy” (1982), starring Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis.
She also appeared on the NBC soap opera “The Doctors” and in several made-for-television movies, including the concentration camp drama “Playing for Time” (1980), with Vanessa Redgrave, and “The Gentleman Bandit” (1981), about a priest wrongly accused of a series of armed robberies.
A cabaret singer as well, Ms. Heflin performed frequently at New York nightclubs. In a 1973 review of a cabaret performance, John S. Wilson of The New York Times praised her voice for its “warm, sunny glow” and “gospel song fervor.”
Marta Michelle Heflin was born on March 29, 1945, in Washington, to Julia and Martin Heflin, a power couple of their day. Her mother was a journalist and theater producer and her father a public relations executive who was the brother of Van Heflin, the Hollywood actor. Information about survivors was not available.
In 1967, Ms. Heflin was in the chorus of a revival of the Lerner and Loewe musical “Brigadoon” at the City Center when she unexpectedly got her big break. Without rehearsal, she stepped into a prominent role as the soubrette Meg when the actress performing the part (without an understudy), Karen Morrow, came down with pneumonia.
In the next few years she landed roles in “Fiddler,” “Hair” and “Salvation,” a rock revue in the form of a Salvation Army-like revival meeting. “I played a nymphomaniac,” Ms. Heflin said in a 1984 interview. Not the obvious kind but the quiet type, she added wryly: “The kind that wears Peter Pan collars.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/arts/marta-heflin-actor-dies-at-68-waif-seen-in-altman-films.html?pagewanted=print[9/26/2013 10:32:42 AM]
Own an Espresso Machine? Broadway’s Targeting You
Data analytics allows shows to determine those most likely to attend
September 25, 2013 By Gordon Cox
Audiences at Broadway musical “First Date” are unusually frequent moviegoers. Fans of Main Stem musical romance probably watch the Food Network. Own an espresso machine? You’re a lot more likely to be a Broadway ticketbuyer than someone who doesn’t.
That’s the kind of information that data analytics and market research are providing to legit producers and presenters, and it’s helping them learn more about their core customers — and the people most likely to become customers — in order to target them in increasingly focused and cost-effective ways.
“Why send out premium-priced VIP offers to people who are looking for deals?” asks John Forese, senior vice president of data services at LiveAnalytics, a Live Nation Entertainment company alongside Ticketmaster, one of the two official outlets for Broadway tickets. “Because the demographic data we can compile is getting more and more granular, the days of sending every ticket offer to everyone in the database are over.”
The enormous footprint of Ticketmaster’s data — drawn from patrons of multiple genres of live events, including concerts and sports, at venues all over the country — makes the LiveAnalytics venture a notable one. But it’s the same sort of consumer insight plenty of other companies in the Broadway space, including Gotham-based Situation Interactive and bicoastal Entertainment Research & Marketing, aim to refine in order to help legiters strengthen their advertising efforts.
LiveAnalytics pulls together data points from its own records and from third-party vendors to rank prospective ticketbuyers from 1 to 1,000, representing the range from least likely to purchase to most likely. So far, the system has worked for Broadway Across America’s national network of touring Broadway shows: The company tried out the predictive model in nine of BAA’s markets around the country, and found that prospects who scored higher than 900 were 5½ times more likely to buy than those who didn’t, according to BAA exec director of sales Joanna Minerley.
ERM, meanwhile, draws its information largely from audience surveys, focus groups and other market research. It was through that data that the producers of “First Date” discovered the show’s young-skewing audience members went to movies as much as twice a week. As a result, “First Date” will soon be rolling out cinema ads that will screen before films.
Weekly Variety
Total Weekly Circulation – 35,403 Monthly Online Readership – 276,128
“The research changed our thinking about who should be reaching out to, what we’re telling them and how we’re spending our money to reach them,” says “First Date” producer Randy Adams.
Situation Interactive, which handles digital and interactive marketing for a number of Broadway shows, bases its main data points on info from visitors to a production’s official website, bolstered with data from other vendors. The yield is a group of sales prospects who are good bets to tempt into ticketbuying because, for instance, they own certain kinds of products.
“I think eventually this will be the new normal, taking a scientific approach like this,” says BAA’s Minerley.
That’s probably true, except for the caveat that so much of this behaviral marketing is made possible via the kind of pervasive Internet tracking that recently has been the focus of ongoing digital-age privacy discussions. Lisa Cecchini, Situation’s director of media and insights, wonders if the current atmosphere will lead to a resurgence of contextual marketing, e.g., placing Broadway ads on websites for legit avids.
“Before, nobody really knew they were being tracked on the Internet,” Cecchini says. “Now everyone knows, and they’re learning how to opt out of it.”