Ruff, who recently played Lady Capulet in the Broadway revival of Romeo and Juliet, will portray Coretta Scott King and Fannie Lou Hamer in the new drama about U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The cast also features Bryan Cranston, an Emmy winner for "Breaking Bad," as LBJ, with Tony nominee John McMartin as Richard Russell, Michael McKean as J. Edgar Hoover, Brandon J. Dirden as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rob Campbell as Governor George Wallace.
All The Way is directed by Bill Rauch, who staged the premiere of the play in 2012 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he serves as artistic director. The play arrives on Broadway following an extended run at the American Repertory Theater earlier this fall. It officially opens March 6.
Here's how it's billed: "1963. An assassin’s bullet catapults Lyndon Baines Johnson into the presidency. A Shakespearean figure of towering ambition and appetite, the charismatic, conflicted Texan hurls himself into Civil Rights legislation, throwing the country into turmoil. Alternately bullying and beguiling, he enacts major social programs, faces down opponents and wins the 1964 election in a landslide. But in faraway Vietnam, a troublesome conflict looms. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright’s vivid dramatization of LBJ’s first year in office, means versus ends plays out on a broad stage canvas as politicians and civil rights leaders plot strategy and wage war."
"He was bigger than life," Cranston said of LBJ. "Sometimes he was friendly, sometimes he was vicious. He would cajole, he would threaten, he would pressure, he would hug. He swung so wide on the spectrum of human emotions in order to accomplish what he felt needed to be done. It doesn't take much time for an actor to look at that and go, 'Wow, how wonderful and frightening to step in those shoes!'" Read the full interview here.
Set design is by Christopher Acebo with costume design by Deborah M. Dryden, lighting design by Jane Cox, original music and sound design by Paul James Prendergast and video projections by Shawn Sagady.
Members of the general public may purchase tickets beginning Dec. 14.
Visit AllTheWayBroadway.com.
