In a political season, it is rare to be afforded an opportunity to watch a consciously and intentional political drama. Politicians are usually better explained through their biographies. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival commissioned All the Way several years ago, and the play went on to achieve success on Broadway, earning Tony Awards for best new play and for its star, Brian Cranston of Breaking Bad fame. The Denver Center Theater production is the first by a regional company since then.

While President Lyndon Johnson is the central character, All the Way is more a history lesson than a character study. Feeling more like tutorial than theater, the play focuses on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and recounts the emergence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s seating challenge at the 1968 national convention. Imagine Ken Burns attempting to present these stories with historical skits, backed by his signature photos, and you will have a good feel for this production.

All the Way opens with a montage of photos from the Kennedy assassination, which are just as emotionally wrenching today as they were more than 50 years ago for those who remember them.

Lyndon Johnson was rightly referred to as a “larger than life” figure. While in college, I attended a White House reception for student government leaders, and I distinctly recall that even at a noisy and crowded reception, I was aware the moment President Johnson entered the room. His mere presence electrified the crowd into immediate silence. Only a handful of politicians can project this kind of personal power, and LBJ was among them.

While C. David Johnson provides a workmanlike portrayal of LBJ’s crude and raunchy banter, his country drawl slips periodically, and he fails to project the “white hot heat” that Cranston brought to the role, as described by one New York reviewer. Terence Archie, who portrays Martin Luther King, Jr., captures the intensity of his character as he plays a game of wits with a president who manipulates every interaction to his own advantage.

King must also work to keep civil rights leaders on a path of non-violence, ranging from the smoldering Stokely Carmichael of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to the cautious Roy Wilkins of the NAACP. LBJ faces his own challenges, wrangling the likes of George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey and his Senate mentor, Georgia’s Richard Russell. He lies, he threatens, he bribes, he “steps on peckers” and twists arms in the interests of expanding fundamental civil rights to African Americans.

LBJ was an unlikely hero, as Robert Caro notes in his multi-volume biography: “It was Lyndon Johnson, among all the white government officials in 20th century America, who did the most to help black men and women in their fight for equality and justice.” And yet, on the night of the 2016 New Hampshire primary, there was not a single African American in the audience at the DCPA.

This is a history worth re-visiting. A few years later, as LBJ tackled the Voting Rights Act, he would shrewdly implore King to take to the streets and “make me do the right thing.”

He was, of course, intent on doing the right thing all along, but there was no subterfuge too outlandish to attempt in that pursuit. During the first act, LBJ paraphrases the adage that politics is war pursued by other means and argues to the contrary. ”No, politics is war,” he says. Staged on a semi-circular set that echoes a congressional hearing room or Teddy Roosevelt’s “arena,” the play portrays LBJ as a warrior smeared with the sweat and dirt of combat.

I could not help but recall the late Katy Atkinson’s support for bringing All the Way to the DCPA. LBJ may have been a flawed leader — he was after all a Democrat — but Atkinson understood the importance of reminding us that politics is always the democratic pursuit of the right thing by flawed men and women — our elected representatives.

All the Way, a play by Robert Schenkkan, directed by Anthony Powell, runs through Feb. 28 at the Stage Theater at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Call the box office at 800-641-1222.