A former president is beyond cranky as we encounter him on the Laguna Playhouse stage in the one-man, two-act play “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.”

We see a vigorous older man storming around a homey mid-century modern living room, stopping only to throw up arms in frustration and pound a desktop with his fist.

Verbally, there are a torrent of “hells” and a stream of “damns,” including that rarity from the last-century “damnation,” which probably only people over 65 — this history lesson’s sweet-spot demo — have likely heard before.

It’s 1962 and the recently retired 34th U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower, waffling over writing an autobiography, has just been ranked by 75 historians in the New York Times as history’s 22nd best president out of 31 considered.

Dismissed to flicker among lesser lights like Andrew Johnson and James Polk (“it takes a lot of brass to stick me three worse than Herbert Hoover”) Eisenhower has had further shade thrown his way, written off as “the great American — not great president.”

A fuming Ike switches on a tape recorder and proceeds to re-argue the true worth of his life and times via a monologue of mostly professional reminiscence.

Less a drama than a conversational soliloquy with staging touches, there is greatness on display with the presence of actor John Rubinstein.

An extremely hale 79, and with a luminous career in live theater — his first stage credit came in 1967 at Anaheim’s Melodyland Theatre! — highlighted by originating the title role of the musical “Pippin” and winning a Tony award for lead actor in “Children of a Lesser God,” Rubinstein animates Eisenhower through sheer rambunctiousness.

Through his vital performance, and no doubt, director Peter Ellenstein’s shaping and sculpting the portrayal, what could be at worst a pooh-bah’s laundry list makes for a consuming evening.

It should be said that Eisenhower certainly lived the ideal existence to structure a two-act historical play.

Act one: modest, midwestern formative beginnings lead to the position as America’s top commander who presides over the defeat of evil incarnate Nazi Germany in World War II.

Act two: the achievements and warts within his 1950s, two-term presidency with personal tales of tragedy — the loss to disease of his youngest son — and success — a fulfilling marriage to lifelong spouse Mamie — woven in.

Director Ellenstein had the aha moment earlier this decade of contriving a work about Eisenhower and the accomplished playwright and Orange County native, Richard Hellesen, took on the task of writing it. This show’s ongoing national tour included an off-Broadway staging in 2023.

Through Eisenhower’s ruminations, Hellesen’s script notably engages with passages that land with rueful resonance to today’s ears, drawing applause from Sunday evening’s opening night crowd.

For instance, early on, the devoutly political moderate Ike warns of the “danger of discord,” between warring political sensibilities at work in America.

Even a seemingly self-evident aside that “The president of the United States ought to have some dignity” received some raucous cheers.

The play, however, is at its least in the second act when it flattens out into a recitation of bullet points of this happened and that happened and then this happened.

Each an important event during its time? No doubt. Worthy of detailed explication? Perhaps less so.

After a while, what one yearns for are fewer domestic political crises and international flashpoints and more insight into how Eisenhower felt about America and its citizenry, some of whom drew more attention than he did during the ‘50s. (Personally, this complainant, shifting in his seat, idly wished for one less kerfuffle with the Russians and Ike telling us about what he made of Elvis).

It’s a handsome and subtly adroit production if not a flashy one.

Marty Burnett’s agreeable scenic design in Laguna is flanked by a changeable screen which employs Joe Huppert’s original projection designs for the national production, which superimposes changing black and white images of figures and events as Eisenhower addresses them.

Lighting designer Esquire Jauchem softens and brightens above and around the ever-moving Rubinstein as topics and memories call for the heightening and muting of the president’s feelings and emotions.

And it feels right that retiree Eisenhower, home alone, would be the sort of fellow to wear a gray tie, a gray jacket and charcoal gray slacks. (Gray suitably reflects the overall cultural era of the ’50s, but is costume coordinator Stacey Nezda also cleverly and symbolically capturing Eiseinhower’s constant straddling of a midpoint between black and white political stridency?)

Subsequent historian revisions of Eisenhower’s presidency have moved him up over the decades, with the most recent one in 2022 rating him as high as the 5th best president.

Those coming to see this show — particularly based on Rubinstein’s winning performance — will also likely like Ike.

‘Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground’

Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of 4)

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Rd., Laguna Beach

When: Regular performances through Feb. 1: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Thursdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sundays. (There will be no 5:30 p.m. performance on Feb. 1)

Tickets: $56-$121

Information: 949-247-5787; lagunaplayhouse.com