LOS ANGELES — Bryan Cranston slips into his characters skin-first. As Walter White in "Breaking Bad," he never lost touch with the ravaged health that was driving this married chemistry teacher into acts of criminal desperation.
In his Tony Award-winning performance as Lyndon B. Johnson in "All the Way," Cranston brought the president's vote-wrangling power to life with a Texas drawl, cocky slouch and inexhaustible lung power. As Howard Beale in the stage version of "Network," he won another Tony for delivering an on-air nervous breakdown that was so visceral it's amazing no one in the audience called 911.
Playing Charles Nichols in Paul Grellong's "Power of Sail," which opened last week at the Geffen Playhouse, Cranston embodies the weary petulance of a grizzled Harvard history professor whose star is in decline. In registering the character's contempt at anyone who would question his progressive bona fides, he takes on the character's niggling aches and pain.
