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Brit Whittle, Mark Jacoby, Steve Sheridan, Martin L’Herault and John Bolger as the five presidents. (Copyright Lenny Stucker).[/caption]
By Annette Hinkle
What would it be like to be a fly on the wall in a room filled with the most powerful figures in history? What if those figures were a collection of U.S. presidents, both past and present? Who, and what, would they talk about?
Those are the types of questions playwright Rick Cleveland sets out to answer in “Five Presidents,” a new play opening this week at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Purely from a writing perspective, it’s a premise rife with potential, and as a fictional exercise, one that could easily pit the likes of John Adams against, say, a Harry Truman.
But this is not fiction. The “Five Presidents” portrayed in this play were all alive at the same time and actually in the same room on one specific day in history. That day was April 22, 1994 — Richard Nixon’s funeral which was held at his presidential library in Loma Linda, California. The room where the action takes place was the one where Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton (then just a year into his first term) waited prior to the start of the service.
As an Emmy Award winning writer, Mr. Cleveland has more insight into the inner workings of presidential politics than most, having written for both “The West Wing” and “House of Cards.”
“I wrote for those two shows because I was a political junkie,” explains Mr. Cleveland. “And that’s also why I wrote the play. Politics is now America’s bloodiest sport. But it wasn’t always as bad as it is now. And it wasn’t nearly as bad on the day of Nixon’s funeral as it is now.”
Writing a play about five real people — presidents at that — comes with great opportunity as well as responsibility. In developing “Five Presidents,” Mr. Cleveland explains that the specific historical events referenced in the script were guided largely by the nature of the event itself — the death of Nixon.
“I was really only interested in those five men on that very specific day,” says Mr. Cleveland. “I always knew it would be set on the day of Nixon’s funeral. One, because I think the presidency changed forever in the wake of his resignation. And two, I think it provided some long overdue closure for President Ford.”
“I was really interested in learning more about these five men personally, more so than politically,” adds Mr. Cleveland. “We all know who they were politically. But who they were and are personally – that’s the play.”
While the story of the public politics is easy to trace, the private story of the presidents is another matter, and in his research, Mr. Cleveland gleaned a lot of new insight into the men.
“Finding out who in the room became great friends out of office, who still held a grudge and over what, those discoveries were fascinating,” says Mr. Cleveland. “For instance, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter became very close friends out of office. They even arranged to give each other’s eulogies.”
Director Mark Clements, artistic director at Milwaukee Repertory Theater, has been involved in this play since its inception. The play was commissioned by Milwaukee Rep and co-produced with the Arizona Theatre Company, and it comes to Sag Harbor after runs in recent months in Tucson, Phoenix and Milwaukee.
From Mr. Cleveland’s earliest pitch of the idea, Mr. Clements felt the premise was ripe with possibility. Their research for “Five Presidents” included a trip to the Nixon library where Mr. Clements and Mr. Cleveland hoped to get the lay of the land, so to speak, and deduce where the presidents were kept waiting that day.
“Rick shot down a corridor where you’re not supposed to go,” recalls Mr. Clements. “We found a ballroom where you can have a meeting or hold an event. It was filled with tables and flowers from some earlier event.”
“We thought, ‘This is it,’”
It all made sense, given the fact the room was right off the outdoor area where the funeral took place, which is why for the play’s set, they have replicated that ballroom right down to the carpeting.
Replicating the presidents themselves was another matter.
“Everyone knows these are not the real people, but given that, we didn’t want an SNL type impersonation,” explains Mr. Clements.
Early in the audition process, the actors were instructed to focus on capturing the flavor of the presidents and avoid Saturday Night Live style impersonations. But as a result, Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Clements felt they were not seeing enough of the men.
“So we changed and said go ahead and do the best impersonation right now based on what you know of these guys,” notes Mr. Clements. “Pretty much everyone in the show came back and did that and succeeded.”
“There are definitely some who look more like their president than others,” he adds. “Every single person I’ve spoken to who has seen the show has an opinion on who was the best — and they’re all different.”
Portraying the presidents fairly, but accurately, in the script was another important goal and Mr. Clements feels it succeeds in that Republicans and Democrats can both sit in the theater and not feel they are being lectured to exclusively from one side or the other.
“In the play we talk about things like the collateral damage every president has had, the blood on their hands, and decisions they had to make on pulling the trigger on something,” says Mr. Clements. “They have to live with that.”
“The thing is, all five get a fair share of bashing,” he adds. “You also have Ronald Reagan, who at this point in the play is just under a year away from announcing he had Alzheimer's which would become apparent.”
“Things like that you want to handle in a respectful way and you wonder how these guys would’ve handled it,” says Mr. Clements. “Some of them wouldn’t have seen him in a while and might have noticed a difference, and Reagan, being a larger than life character who was a performer to the end, is that tool for creating tension and humor, but it also needs to be handled respectfully.”
Though some people may wonder about the authenticity of the private exchanges between the men in the play, Mr. Clements claims everything is either known fact or well documented enough to substantiate its presence in the script — except for one supposition about Gerald Ford upon which the action turns.
“The paly supposes that Ford, on the day of the funeral, decides at the 11th hour he is not going to do the eulogy because he feels the pardon [of Nixon] was sufficient and he’s paid for it ever since,” says Mr. Clements.
“That’s the only thing that probably isn’t true,” he adds. “There are things people will say that wouldn’t happen, but we can give evidence that they more than likely did.”
“Five Presidents runs through July 19, 2015 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor and stars John Bolger (Gerald Ford), Mark Jacoby (George Herbert Walker Bush), Martin L’Herault (Jimmy Carter), Steve Sheridan (Ronald Reagan), Brit Whittle (Bill Clinton). Every Sunday high school and college students are admitted free to matinee performances, and theater-goers under age 30 can see the show for $30. On Tuesdays, Bay Street’s artistic director Scott Schwartz and members of the cast take part in a talkback session after the performance. To purchase tickets, call (631) 725-0818, stop by the theater box office or visit baystreet.org.
