Want to experience some recent history served up in an engaging, powerful format? Taking in a performance of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan‘s All the Way and/or The Great Society would certainly fill the bill. Just this week I enjoyed one of the final performances of the season of the world premiere production of the latter at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. All the Way also had its premiere there (in 2012), going on to resounding success in a limited run on Broadway this year and earning Tony awards for Best Play and Best Performance by a Lead Actor in a Play for Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson. Bill Rauch, the artistic director at OSF since 2007, directed both premiere productions in Oregon and the Broadway show. This year’s The Great Society picks up where the action in All the Way (chronicling LBJ’s first year in office) left off, spanning 1965–1968 and following Johnson’s efforts to pass landmark legislation and establish programs (the Voting Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, Headstart, VISTA, Medicare, to name a few) to address inequities in American society which he saw as hindrances to the United States becoming a truly great nation. All this while the conflict in Vietnam grew, sucking away lives, resources and good will from Johnson’s plans at the same time the country threatened to explode with civil rights unrest and economic inequality. The set, a large oval space (suggesting one of the main settings, the Oval Office) backed by three ranks of wooden desks and benches, calling to mind the Senate Chamber, stands in for a wide range of places in which the action occurs: D.C., Chicago, Watts, Alabama, Georgia, Texas. Rear screen projections provide scenic as well as historic details: images of the Pettus Bridge in Selma, the Rose Garden, maps of South Vietnam, burned-out buildings in Watts, civil rights marches . . . as well as periodic reminders of the rising toll of dead and wounded American soldiers in Vietnam. An ensemble of actors plays a host of historical characters whose names will resonate with those acquainted with the times: J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Stokely Carmichael, Everett Dirksen, William Westmoreland, Richard Nixon and, of course, Hubert Humphrey and LBJ (magnificently played by Jack Willis, appearing in nearly every scene). Although I was in elementary school during those years, my father’s work with the Democratic Party (and my surname — Kennedy) meant that I was privy to adult conversations and concerns in the political arena, and I avidly read Life magazine weekly and still carry some of its iconic images of those figures and those times in my head. This play, presenting them to my adult self, reinforced what a remarkable, history-changing period this was, and my husband and I both remarked that it is stunning when one considers how many huge events occurred in such a short span of time. We were also struck by how much statements and situations from that time resonate with events today. Both All the Way and The Great Society will be performed in repertory at the Seattle Repertory Theatre (which commissioned and co-produced the second play) with most of the same cast members as the OSF productions Nov. 14, 2014–Jan. 4, 2015. You could also catch performances of All the Way at the ZACH Theatre in Austin, Texas, Apr. 8–May 10, 2015. HBO Films purchased the rights to the play and plans a film with Bryan Cranston reprising his role as LBJ. All offer opportunities to experience the great theater which history provides and a chance to examine our current political climate in light of an earlier one. — Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor