Theater preview | Political games thrive in "All the King's Men"

Backroom deals. Campaign smears. Hypocrisy and rabble-rousing.

Just in case you needed a reminder that all of this is nothing new on the American electoral landscape, Intiman Theatre is about to open a run of "All the King's Men."

Based on the enduring Pulitzer Prize novel by poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren, this is Adrian Hall's stage adaptation of the heady rise and bloody fall of Louisiana politico Willie Stark.

And though the many-faceted plot is set in the 1920s and '30s, it conveys an all-too-timeless fable of what Shakespeare's Macbeth called "Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself / And falls on th'other."

"All the King's Men," Warren's fictional masterwork, is not the college-required must-read it used to be. But it is instructive to pick up this powerful book from time to time, as a reminder of the ways that pursuing, and also retaining, power can undermine even the loftiest intentions.

Told from the vantage point of Jack Burden (played at Intiman by Leo Marks), a cynical journalist who becomes a trusted aide to Willie (Seattle acting alum John Procaccino), this is not your standard cautionary fable of "an idealist who enters politics, gets corrupted and loses his idealism," points out Brandeis University English professor John Burt, Warren's literary executor.

Rather, it is a broad-based study of an eloquent and magnetic leader so intent on defying the moneyed class to serve the Great Depression-era poor, he stops at nothing to do so. He becomes, according to Burt, "a prophet transgressor, who lets people down not by his vices, but by his virtues."

Warren loosely modeled Willie's trajectory — from dedicated small-town lawyer to ruthless potentate — on the colorful true-life saga of Huey P. Long. Long shook up the Louisiana establishment with his man-of-the-people message, and he served as the flamboyant populist governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and a U.S. senator from 1932 to 1935 — the year he was felled by an assassin's bullet, at age 42.

Warren witnessed Long's political career up close, while teaching English at Louisiana State University. But initially he had no intention of crafting a novel with a similar character. Instead, he wrote a verse play on the subject, titled "Proud Flesh."

"He was dissatisfied with the play," says Bedford Clark, a retired Texas A&M University professor who edited Warren's letters and is the author of "The American Vision of Robert Penn Warren."

"He ran 'Proud Flesh' by friends who were drama critics, and received some critique. But he found he could do a great deal more with the story in a novel."

That wasn't the end of Warren's fascination, and flirtation, with theater, though. Notes Clark, "Warren loved Shakespeare, and I think that during the writing of 'Proud Flesh' in the late 1930s, the rise of [Italian dictator] Benito Mussolini was very much on his mind, but so was 'Julius Caesar.'

"After Huey Long's assassination," Clark continues, "when Louisiana was suddenly placed under martial law, he was teaching one of those big, introductory Shakespeare courses at LSU, with hundreds of students. He said that when he taught 'Julius Caesar,' for the first time, the class perked up and paid close attention."

"All the King's Men" was published in 1946 (the title was a play on Long's famous catchphrase, "Every man a king"), and Warren was showered with raves. The New York Times said the epic tale was "magnificently vital reading," and The Nation reviewer proclaimed, "For sheer virtuosity ... I doubt indeed whether it can be matched in American fiction."

But Warren still had the stage bug, Clark insists. "He always wanted a theatrical success." In pursuit of that, Warren himself wrote two plays based on his novel: "Willie Stark: His Rise and Fall" and "All the King's Men: A Play."

The book was also turned into opera by composer Carlisle Floyd, and two noted movies. The first film was a 1949 hit that won Oscars as best picture, and for its star Broderick Crawford, a burly, bullish force of nature as Willie, and featured player Mercedes McCambridge, as Willie's tough-talking secretary and lover, Sadie Burke (played at Intiman by Deirdre Madigan).

Says Clark, "Warren was glad to have the money from the movie, and he worked a little on the script, but I can't imagine he was too happy with how it turned out. They didn't set it in Louisiana, but in some generic state."

In 1989, after serving as the first U.S. poet laureate, Warren died at age 84. Nearly 20 years later, Hollywood remade "All the King's Men," but the 2006 version was a box-office and critical flop — though there was some praise for Sean Penn's turn as Willie, and for the lush cinematography of the Louisiana scenery.

Adrian Hall's play based on the novel debuted at Dallas Theatre Center in 1987, and has since had other regional theater productions. But it's a big undertaking, and the capper on Intiman's five-play American Cycle of staged literary classics.

The show's director at Intiman, Pam MacKinnon, calls Hall's adaptation "very sweeping. We have 18 actors playing roughly 50 characters in 42 scenes." It also boasts songs by Louisiana-bred singer-songwriter Randy Newman (including "Kingfish," a tune about Long), that weren't written for the play but are indicated in the script.

"As a country, we get very political every four years, and the themes of this story are on our radar right now," MacKinnon says. "Our politicians seem very different than Willie and his cronies, but a lot of what Warren wrote still rings true. We see the same kind of mudslinging, and the same 'I have to bust my opponent to win' mentality now."

Whatever reflections audience members see in the mirror held up to our republic by "All the King's Men," the book's literary reputation seems secure.

Says Burt, "There are many other novels that have politicians as central characters, and that turn on politics. But I can't think of another modern author who has understood the philosophical stakes of politics as well as Warren did."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com