Want to feel old? Head to Theatre at St. Clement’s to see their latest production. There, you’ll find the original Pippin, John Rubinstein, starring in a one-man show.
He’s playing Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gulp.
Yes, time marches on for all of us, including Rubinstein, the stage and screen veteran whose many credits include his Tony Award-winning turn in the original Broadway production of Children of a Lesser God. But while the actor has (a lot) less hair, his talent remains undiminished, as demonstrated by this sterling performance as the 34th president of the United States whose historical reputation has gained by leaps and bounds in recent years.
That wasn’t the case in 1962, when Richard Hellesen’s play is set. A running gag permeating the piece involves Ike’s petulant reaction to being ranked only the 22nd best president (out of 31, for reasons explained in the show) in a recently published article polling historians. “Peace, more or less. Prosperity, more or less,” a fulminating Eisenhower sums up his presidency while dictating his recollections of his life and career into a tape recorder for a planned memoir.
It’s a serviceable framework for the play, which follows in the heel of such illustratious predecessors as Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight!, James Whitmore in Give ’em Hell, Harry! and Julie Harris in The Belle of Amherst, among many others. These sorts of biographical one-person dramas seem to be catnip for actors, who have the opportunity to command the audience’s attention without pesky co-stars, and producers, who like to save money.
Thus arrives Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, arriving here after an acclaimed stint in Los Angeles. Set in Ike’s homey study at his farm in Gettysburg, complete with a set of golf clubs and a painting easel in the corner, the play depicts the retired 71-year-old regaling us with his life story, displaying considerable modesty while not shy about reminding us of his considerable achievements, from his military career that included being the Supreme Allied Commander for the Allied Powers during World War II, his presidency of Columbia University, and his two terms as president.
Emphasizing that the key to his success was “moderation” (what a concept!), Ike touts his successes, including planning the D-Day invasion, creating the Interstate Highway System, greenlighting NASA, signing the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and sending federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to protect African-American students from angry mobs as they attempted to enter their schools.
Much of the play is taken from Eisenhower’s own words from his memoirs, speeches and letters, and it all feels authentic. Rubinstein, skillfully approximating Ike’s Midwestern accent and measured cadences, delivers a perfectly modulated performance that conveys the same restraint, or let’s say, “moderation,” that marked Eisenhower’s presidency. It’s thus all the more effective when he subtly suggests Eisenhower’s suppressed anguish when talking about his parents, his determination to inspect every inch of the Nazi concentration camps he liberated, and the death in infancy of his first son. The little boy died after contracting scarlet fever, brought into the house by a housekeeper who had supposedly recovered from the disease. “I hired her,” he says guiltily, leaning into the tape recorder and repeating the words for emphasis.
He also defends his failure to take on Joseph McCarthy, whom he describes as a “fascist in a rumpled suit,” saying that the Communist-hunting demagogue had the support of the majority of GOP congressmen and that he knew that he would eventually self-destruct. And he talks with shame about lying to the world about the downed U2 spy plane that was originally claimed to be a weather research aircraft.
That incident demonstrates the tendency of history to repeat itself (Chinese weather balloons, anyone?), which the play takes pain to emphasize via such moments as Ike talking about his decision to seek the presidency to counter the isolationist “America First” movement promoted by such politicians as Senator Robert Taft. “The idea that the United States can build a wall around itself and be perfectly safe — I can’t imagine anyone saying such a thing if they’d been as far as the third grade,” Ike argues via a line guaranteed to get knowing chuckles from the audience. (Another example comes when he talks about his successor, JFK. “I think he probably finished Dick Nixon’s career for good,” he comments.)
Enhanced by projections of historical photographs that give the production the feel of an illustrated biography, Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground proves both a compelling solo drama and a welcome reminder that there was once a time when moderation did indeed play a vital role in national politics.
