The play, which recouped its $3.9 million investment in early June, had grossed a record-breaking $1,425,001 for the week ending June 22. In its closing week of performances All The Way beat its previous record, taking in $1,623,495 for the week ending June 29. The production played to sold-out, standing-room crowds in its final week.
The production broke records for the highest amount ever generated by a straight play in one eight-performance week in the history of Broadway.
All The Way began Broadway previews Feb. 10 and officially opened March 6. Critics praised the production that features Cranston in a tour de force performance as U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Cranston won the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, and the production won the Tony for Best Play. Bill Rauch directed the drama that played 131 Broadway performances.
Read the reviews here. Cranston ("Breaking Bad") was joined by John McMartin as Richard Russell, Michael McKean as J. Edgar Hoover, Brandon J. Dirden as Martin Luther King, Jr., Rob Campbell as Governor George Wallace, Robert Petkoff as U.S. Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Jr., and Roslyn Ruff as Coretta Scott King and Fannie Lou Hamer.
The cast also included Eric Lenox Abrams (Bob Moses), J. Bernard Calloway (Ralph Abernathy), James Eckhouse (Robert McNamara), Peter Jay Fernandez (Roy Wilkins), Christopher Gurr (Senator Strom Thurmond), William Jackson Harper (Stokely Carmichael), Christopher Liam Moore (Walter Jenkins), Richard Poe (Senator Everett Dirksen), Bill Timoney (Senator Karl Mundt), Steve Vinovich (Rep. Emanuel Celler), Ethan Phillips (Stanley Levison) and Susannah Schulman (Lurleen Wallace).
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."
Set design was 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.
All The Way was produced by Jeffrey Richards, Louise Gund, Jerry Frankel, Stephanie P. McClelland, Double Gemini Productions, Rebecca Gold, Scott M. Delman, Barbara H. Freitag, Harvey Weinstein, Gene Korf, William Berlind, Luigi Caiola, Gutterman Chernoff, Jam Theatricals, Gabrielle Palitz, Cheryl Wiesenfeld and Will Trice.
