STAGE WEST: "Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground" at North Coast Repertory Theatre

John Rubinstein in "Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground."                            Photograph by Maria Baranova

            There are certain protocols one is expected to observe when in the audience for the performance of a play, among them not applauding spoken lines throughout. That’s for afterward, or in some cases if warranted after a particularly impactful scene when the house lights darken. Or, if absolutely impossible to suppress, after a main character’s empowered or passionate moment of monologue.
            But a very discernible sense of the audience wanting to burst into applause, and to do so many times, hovered above the North Coast Repertory theatergoers last night during John Rubinstein’s performance of “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.” I was among them, scarcely able to hold back. The one-person-show script written by Richard Hellesen and drawn in part on words written or spoken before crowds by Dwight D. Eisenhower is an intended enlightenment on the military hero and 34th president of the United States, but also a searing indictment of the America today under Donald Trump.
            As Rubinstein told me in an interview a few weeks ago for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Ike is a largely overlooked figure in presidential history today, known by most for coining the term “military industrial complex.” There was more – much more – to the man, Rubinstein said with adamance.
            So there was.
         Over two hours and two acts, Hellesen and Rubinstein show us that Eisenhower was an avowed moderate politically but a man of stout principle and unwavering belief in the virtue possible in America, a nation where differences didn’t have to create enemies, where high-minded truths were celebrated not castigated or denied, where a president always put the people above himself.
            What the hell’s happened?
         The San Diego premiere of this much-produced one-person-show is directed by Peter Ellenstein, who first brought the script to Rubinstein, an accomplished actor on stage, in film and on television. (He broke through as a young man starring in “Pippin” on Broadway; I have followed his career from there to the acclaimed “Children of a Lesser God” film and the “Family” TV series and even, as I joked with him in conversation, a memorable bit in the so-bad-it’s-fun horror flick “The Car.”)
            Rubinstein is 78 now and portraying Eisenhower at age 72 when “This Piece of Ground” is set in 1962 on Ike and Mamie’s farm in Gettysburg, Penn. His is not a quiet, studied oration but a cranky and often passionate performance with Eisenhower even pounding a desk for emphasis at one point. There’s more of the general than the commander-in-chief in this figure on stage, though the script has Rubinstein devoting the first act to the military years and the second act to the presidency.
            As we drop in on Ike at home, he’s rankled about a poll published in a magazine in which historians have rated, top to bottom, U.S. presidents up to the year 1962. He’s been placed at No. 22, a designation defended by the scholars who deem him to be so-so, even mediocre. The magazine folded over to the ratings page becomes Rubinstein’s principal prop during the show; we keep waiting for him to hurl it across the room. He’s too dignified to tear it to pieces.
            The narrative goes that the retired Eisenhower is going to write a book about his years in public service – though he doesn’t really want to. After an opening phone call to that effect with his book editor, he can’t help himself but dictate into a tape recorder just the kind of self-analysis and candor that such a book might include if written.
            As Eisenhower rolls through the years, from growing up in Kansas with a strict father and a religious mother (who hated war, by the way, but always supported her son), to entering West Point, to the valor and terrors of World War II and onto into the campaign and presidential years, Rubinstein is tireless and ever on point, moving here and there around the comfortable living room set by Marty Burnett. A backdrop “window” shows the bucolic Pennsylvania farm country and the skies above that darken as a storm beckons, then arrives. Facilitating the trip through history and giving it visual enhancement are strategic projections by Joe Huppert of the historical personages and family members of Ike’s past.
            I acknowledge having known very little about Eisenhower when I sat down in the theater. He was supreme commander of the Allied forces, yes I knew that. He was the impetus for the interstate highway system, I knew that too. Not much more. So for me, and likely for many others, “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” is an illuminating history lesson and certainly a portrait of a man who, from a personal standpoint, they either don’t know or understand or even remember well.
            Like a No. 22 on a list of 35, right?
            Not being a historian myself, I don’t know whether Hellesen’s script idealizes Eisenhower in addition to profiling him. That may be so. Copious research would be needed to make a judgment either way.
            But I will say this: I’m thinking of Dwight David Eisenhower today far, far more than I ever have before, and my curiosity about him and his life has grown substantially.
            Hellesen does not portray Eisenhower as a man without flaws or failures during his two lives of public service to his country. If he had, no amount of commitment brought to the role by Rubinstein could give this play the weight of importance that it has.
            Then there’s that inescapable parallel between the Eisenhower principles and the unprincipled presidency of today. It’s likely that Hellesen was fully cognizant of that parallel in writing “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.” Sometimes, he may be trying to tell us, history does not repeat itself – it sinks to the depths. We can only hope that someone else who truly loves America for its inherent good and for the good that its people can be, comes along to lead it, and honor it.
            “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” runs through Nov. 23 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.