Michael McKean, Brandon J. Dirden Join Bryan Cranston In ‘All The Way’
Michael McKean and Brandon J. Dirden are joining Bryan Cranston in his Broadway debut, All the Way.
Producers announced Tuesday that McKean and Dirden will reprise their roles as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Cranston will reprise his role as President Lyndon B. Johnson, which he played during the American Repertory Theatre’s production in Cambridge, Massachusetts this fall. The play originated at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2012 with a different cast before heading to the ART in September. The sold-out run ended October 12.
All the Way will begin previews February 10, 2014, and will open at the Neil Simon Theatre on March 6. The play is written by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Schenkkan and directed by Bill Rauch. All the Way focuses on LBJ’s tumultuous first year in office following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“He was bigger than life,” Cranston said of Johnson. “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!'”
Michael McKean’s previous Broadway credits include Hairspray, The Homecoming, and Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. McKean played Leonard “Lenny” Kosnowski in Laverne & Shirley and David St. Hubbins in This is Spinal Tap. McKean was also a cast member on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s; his celebrity impersonations included Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Tom Skerritt, Howard Stern, Adam West, and Patrick Stewart.
Brandon J. Dirden’s Broadway credits include Clybourne Park, a response to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. His television credits include The Big C, and Tyler Perry’s House of Payne. Dirden received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign.
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