Theatre in Review: Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground (Theatre at St. Clement's)

	John Rubinstein. Photo: Maria Baranova

Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground is both a new play and a revival of sorts: It brings back the Dead Celebrity Playhouse format in which a famous person, sitting in his or her living room, relives the past in detail. In this case, our narrator is the 34th president, a military hero who, in the White House, became the unwitting symbol of conformist, materialist 1950s America. That he was a rather more complicated figure goes without saying. But this piece leans heavily toward hagiography; it's rather like a campaign biography with the unpleasant bits smoothed over. It is clearly pitched toward audiences nostalgic for the days when the Republican Party wasn't entirely populated by connivers and mental cases.

Give playwright Richard Hellesen credit for confronting the format's artificiality: Instead of having his protagonist talk to the fourth wall as so many others do, he has Eisenhower dictating a lengthy tape-recorded memo to the editor of his forthcoming memoir -- a book he isn't certain he wants to finish. (It is 1962 and he has retired to a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he has plenty of time to mull over the past.) Dealing a blow to his confidence is a magazine poll of eminent historians who list him, in terms of consequentiality, as number 22 out of 35. "I don't suppose you'd consider switching me and Martin Van Buren," he wonders, acidly.

What follows is a breezy trip through the years with Eisenhower, stacked with plenty of applause lines designed to position him as a man of moderation, the voice of sweet reason in tumultuous times. The first act, which takes in his Kansas upbringing (generally idyllic), marriage (to Mamie, a fine woman), and World War II experiences (a bittersweet victory due to the many lives lost), is pleasant if almost entirely platitudinous. An occasionally interesting detail is dropped -- for example, the fact that his pacifist mother bravely sent him off to West Point, then retired to her bedroom to weep over his choice of career -- but never explored in any depth.

It's probably not surprising that Eisenhower doesn't discuss Kay Summersby, the wartime chauffeur/secretary with whom he was apparently emotionally, if not physically, entangled. But Hellesen's airbrushed portrait is often rather too smooth to be believed. The second act features some interestingly juicy details, including the revelation that Harry Truman asked Eisenhower to replace him on the 1948 presidential ticket, as a way of averting Douglas MacArthur, who planned to run as a Republican. But the defense of Eisenhower's administration can be a little hard to take. Eisenhower comes down hard on Senator Joe McCarthy while insisting that not publicly denouncing him was the wisest possible course. Maybe so, but he conveniently omits that Richard Nixon, his own vice president, was an expert Redbaiter, smearing the reputation of his opponent Helen Gahagan Douglas and running around pumpkin patches in search of evidence against Alger Hiss. (Interestingly, Nixon is dispatched in a couple of lines, with Eisenhower characterizing him as washed up. Of course, that's what everyone thought in 1962.)

Hellesen also seeks to portray Eisenhower as ahead of his time on race, having him note that he completed Truman's half-hearted integration of the military and, with some trepidation, sent the Army to Little Rock, Arkansas to stop the locals from blocking nine Black students from attending an all-white high school. Fair enough, but in the eyes of many, most notably Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, he pursued such goals at arm's length, refusing to speak out and provide moral leadership. As Warren recalled (in a comment you won't find in Hellesen's script) Eisenhower said, referring to the white citizens opponents of Brown vs. Board of Education, "These are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big black bucks."

None of this is meant to indict Eisenhower, who did achieve a great many things in war and the political arena. His management of the D-Day invasion of Europe is enough to guarantee his place in the national pantheon. And one story not included here is his decision not to pursue a mass removal of lesbian nurses during the war, once he learned that some of his trusted personnel intended to turn themselves in. But there is a more complex, conflicted character -- a man of his time -- lurking behind the carefully polished façade and it would be worth getting to know him.

Smoothly directed by Peter Ellenstein, Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground is buoyed by John Rubinstein's committed performance, which is full of vigor and irascibility, especially when stewing amusingly over those pesky historians. He also captures Eisenhower in moments of introspection, ruminating on the costs of war, contemplating the horror of nuclear weapons, and shame-facedly copping to remaining silent about George C. Marshall when the secretary of state -- who basically rescued Europe after the war -- had run afoul of McCarthy. Surely, this fine actor could tackle a thornier, more nuanced look at Eisenhower.

Michael Deegan's living room interior is attractive, with the regrettable exception of the decision to use the enormous picture window, located upstage center, as a projection screen. Such an approach only underlines the production's slightly stodgy, lecture-hall quality and Rubinstein must fight to hold our attention against the large-scale, high-resolution imagery. Still, the projection designer Joe Huppert has dug up many compelling images, including Eisenhower family photos and shots of flag-draped coffins, Nazi death camps, and Nikita Khrushchev getting ready to bang his shoe. (Huppert has also provided a solid sound design.) The lighting, by Esquire Jauchem, better known as a special effects expert, nicely reflects the changing weather (a passing storm and subsequent floods of sunlight).

It's ironic that Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground is dedicated to selling its title subject as a defender of liberal values (a term he hated). Such are the gyrations of our politics in an era when the terms "liberal" and "conservative" often seem to have lost their traditional meanings. This production is conceived as an emollient, meant to soothe and inspire. But the real Eisenhower was surely more interesting than the slightly waxen figure presented here. --David Barbour