Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

not Broadway, was the venue for playwrights to take up questions of draft resistance, asin Hair, or political issues, as in Garson’s MacBird. 49Garson’s play parodies Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth at it follows a folksyTexan politician named MacBird (a thinly-disguised Lyndon Baines Johnson) on hisambitious quest to wrest power away from the ruling Kennedy family. By positioningJohnson in the role of Macbeth and John F. Kennedy in the role of Duncan, Garsonimplicates Johnson in Kennedy's assassination. This was the view widely held bypolitical activists who distrusted the government and scorned the speed at which thePresident's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy investigated theassassination. The Commission (known as the Warren Commission because it washeaded by Chief Justice Earl Warren) released its report within a year of theassassination, stating that “[t]he Commission has found no evidence that either LeeHarvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, toassassinate President Kennedy” (21). 50 Scholar Tom Blackburn argues that Garson is notso much accusing Johnson of conspiracy but rather offering a general critique of“American domestic and foreign policy carried out in ad hominem terms, and acommentary on the duplicity and self-interest of all politicians” (140). Either way,President Johnson in MacBird! appears as an ignorant, violent, and crafty megalomaniac.His rival, Robert Kennedy, is portrayed as an educated, effete, and heartless demagogueThe production then moved to the Cheetah nightclub for a few weeks (22 December, 1967 to 28 January,1968). It was then revised by Ragni, Rado, and MacDermot and restaged by Tom O’Horgan for itsBroadway opening at the Biltmore Theatre on 29 April, 1968.49 MacBird! opened in February of 1967 at the Village Gate Theatre, with Stacy Keach and RueMcClanahan in the leading roles.50 Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald in November, 1963, shortly after Oswald was arrested forassassinating Kennedy.115