At Olney Theatre, Ike Wins Again

John Rubinstein as Dwight Eisenhower Photo: Maria Baranova

There’s always a tightrope act when a theatre company brings in a production that centers on a former president during election season.  This is especially true in a country that is so massively divided politically. 

In offering The New Los Angeles Repertory Company production of Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, the Olney Theatre Center can feel confident that partisanship can take a break and re-ignite, if necessary, following this two-hour, solo performer play. Through this biographical account, audiences can evaluate the successes or failures of the two-term president Dwight D. Eisenhower, also known as Ike, and can hope that his values of true patriotism, compromise, moderation and service can lead us to a future with less toxic politics and eschewing the extremes on both sides. As Eisenhower pronounced during the play, “The middle was the usable part of the road — if you go too far right or left, you wind up in a ditch.”

In a master class acting performance, John Rubinstein plays the role of the folksy but complex Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mr. Rubinstein is an acclaimed veteran of theatre and television. He was a Tony Award winner in Children of a Lesser God and famously originated the title role in Pippin over a half century ago. He also appeared in Kiss of the Spider Woman among many other plays and musicals. For his role in the off-Broadway production of Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, Mr. Rubinstein was nominated for the Outer Critics’ Circle and the Off-Broadway award for Best Solo Performance.

The play, whose run has been extended for a second time at Olney, by Richard Hellesen is adapted from a vast array of Eisenhower's memoirs, speeches, and letters. Director Peter Ellenstein allows Mr. Rubinstein to freely move around the stage as he speaks to an old tape recorder in preparation for an upcoming book. Sometimes he paces. Sometimes he stands. Sometimes he sits. And sometimes he talks on the phone to unseen parties. Since there are no other actors to interact with, this movement is necessary so that the soliloquy doesn’t come off as static as some one-person shows do.

Photo: Maria Baranova

Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground is set in 1962 in the sun porch of the house at the Eisenhower farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with a picture window looking out at an open field with changeable skies.  That window serves as a screen for projections, designed by Joe Huppert, of the people and events in Eisenhower’s life—photos of a slew of family members, to an old photo of the West Point Academy, which he attended, to a concentration camp in Europe at the end of World War II. All are displayed while Mr. Rubinstein is speaking, providing a rich texture to the production. 

Michael Deegan’s set within the black box confines is pleasant and homey and for realism, precise in its details. The set pieces include period (mid-1950’s) furniture, such as desks, a telephone, a bookcase, lamps, easy chairs, assorted knick-knacks, family pictures, a painting Eisenhower was working on, and an area rug as part of the decoration scheme. Even Eisenhower’s old golf bag is seen in the vestibule (he was an avid golfer). 

The play opens with Eisenhower, 18 months removed from his presidency, attired in a plain sport jacket, tie and trousers, grousing angrily how he was ranked 22^nd out of 31 presidents assessed by 75 historians in an article appearing in the New York Times Magazine. This is the root of the play and a source of much of the humor. He would frequently question how in the world specific presidents were ranked above him, generating laughter from the audience.

During this oration, Mr. Rubinstein as the affable Eisenhower, proficiently and earnestly offers his perspective of the formation of his character. He tells of his Kansas upbringing and the role his parents played in his development. He recounts his decades-long decorated Army career including his heroic victories especially as the allied commander at D-Day during World War II.

Photo: Maria Baranova

He speaks of his two terms as president – and contemplates the qualities and adversities that make an American president great. What struck me was his admission that he was reluctant to be a president in the first place but wound up with two lopsided victories over Adlai Stevenson. He admitted he enjoyed being in the Army most and had to be persuaded to run for the highest office in the land.

Presenting his own accomplishments from his perspective, President Eisenhower certainly had victories to point to. He signed landmark civil rights bills. He condemned mob rule and sent in Federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the 1954 Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. Though fiscally conservative, Eisenhower spent large amounts of funds to create our Interstate Highway system, founding NASA and expanding Social Security. All the while he reiterates his questioning of his place in the presidential rankings in the article.

With all these triumphs, Mr. Rubinstein also adroitly conveys the sadness Eisenhower and wife Mamie had to endure in the death of his first-born child, the shock and anger while visiting a Nazi concentration camp and the challenges he experienced in dealing with Senator Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism.

"In a master class acting performance, John Rubinstein plays the role of the folksy but complex Dwight D. Eisenhower."

What was not mentioned in Hellesen’s play but a shadow over his presidency was his signing Executive Order 10450 in April 1953 that banned lesbians and gays from working in the federal government or any of its contractors. The order contributed to the ongoing “Lavender Scare” of the mid-1950s where thousands lost Federal jobs.  Moreover, Eisenhower was known to have been zealous in his pursuit of rooting out gay people in the armed forces.

Nonetheless, Eisenhower points out it is better “to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.” He extols the virtue of moderation and presciently warns of the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex, a term he created. In this play, Hellesen’s Eisenhower lays down a blueprint for future generations to take that usable middle of the road and avoid those ditches.

Mr. Rubinstein is brilliant in the role showcasing a full range of emotions and not missing a line. He speaks in a realistic cadence that befits Eisenhower’s long military career. His movement around the stage skillfully augments his spoken words.

In Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground you will receive a lesson in history, a taste of politics, a little philosophy,  and perhaps more importantly, humanity. You will experience some laughter and some melancholy, but you will undoubtedly be riveted to the performance by an extraordinary actor in John Rubinstein who works his craft with aplomb.  

Though the show has been extended due to its popularity, tickets are going fast, so you need to hurry.

Running time. Approximately two hours with an intermission.

EXTENDED FOR SECOND TIME: Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground runs through November 3, 2024, at Olney Theatre Center, Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney, MD. Tickets ($45–$60) are available online here or through the box office at 301-924-3400, open from 12 p.m. – 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. 

This reviewer with John Rubinstein, the original Pippin in 2015
returning as Charlamagne in the touring production of PIPPIN 
at the Hippodrome Theatre Photo: Bob Ford