Theater : How Presidential History Repeats Itself : With ‘Everyone’s Friend,’ James Staley looks back at Warren G. Harding for lessons about today.

The American presidency seems to be a hot topic on Los Angeles theater stages in this pre-election year.

In April, the Mark Taper Forum presented Anna Deavere Smith’s sprawling work-in-progress “House Arrest: An Introgression,” examining the relationship of the presidency and the media from George Washington to Bill Clinton. In March, Hollywood’s 2nd Stage Theatre offered “Starr Struck,” a musical satire on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, produced by the Blank Theatre Company and Glueckman Entertainment.

Both of those plays chased after current events--and actress-playwright Smith acknowledged that even multiple rewrites couldn’t keep up with the moving target of the Lewinsky scandal and Clinton’s impeachment. The difficulty of basing theater on ever-changing news headlines led to the Taper’s 11th-hour decision to present Smith’s play as a work-in-progress, with a moderated audience discussion serving as the second act.

Veteran stage, film and television actor James Staley, 51, was as fascinated by the Clinton fallout as anyone. But for his first playwriting effort, “Everyone’s Friend” (he also serves as his own producer), Staley chose to hark back to the past instead of trying to keep up with current events.

Because, Staley says, when it comes to the presidency, it’s always the same story.

“Everyone’s Friend,” which opened Friday at Sherman Oaks’ Whitefire Theatre, details the turbulent times of America’s 29th president, Warren G. Harding (1865-1923). Harding’s administration will forever be scarred by the Teapot Dome scandal, which came to light after his death in office. During his administration, he was betrayed by his inferiors, attacked in the press because of rumored “Negro blood” in his family and extraordinarily prone to extramarital affairs--including one carried on in his Oval Office closet with young Nan Britton, mother of his illegitimate daughter.

Now, the Encyclopedia Americana describes Harding, who served from 1921-23, as follows: “Personally honest, with the best of intentions, Harding has come to seem the least of American presidents.” “Everyone’s Friend” is the first in Staley’s planned trilogy of plays dealing with the lives of three presidents: Harding, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover.

Staley’s lengthy acting credits include “Of Mice and Men” and “A Texas Trilogy” on Broadway, feature films including “Protocol,” “American Dreamer” and “Desert Hearts,” and, as he describes it, guest-starring roles on “about 100 TV shows.” But he decided he’d be better off watching from the wings than attempting to portray Harding himself.

“I became interested [in the presidency] out of anger and frustration at recent politics,” said Staley, a mild-mannered native Oklahoman, during a recent conversation at the Whitefire. On a table in front of him were a handful of newly minted “Win With Harding” campaign buttons, created to help promote the play.

“And I am nonpartisan in my frustration and anger--it’s just about what we’ve all been through in the last eight years, since the election of Clinton,” the playwright said. “Nobody’s playing nicely anymore.

“But what can I say about the ‘80s and ‘90s, really? We all were there, and there are so many people smarter and wiser than I am to [write about] that. In going back to the turn of the century--you find all the same things; it’s just as mean-spirited. There just isn’t the close-up camera and the hidden microphone.

“What I am trying to do is take three different men with three different flaws that caused their demise. They each experienced huge success, and they each experienced huge failure.”

Staley cheerfully admits that he had to repeat a history course at the University of Oklahoma three times before he got hooked. Since then, he said, he’s been a “presidential nut.” “I like all of the presidents, to a greater or lesser degree,” he says. “They are American kings. Shakespeare wasn’t afraid to deal with the great heroes of history, and these are our heroes.” Staley shopped his play around a little to regional theaters, but said he eventually decided to produce it himself, scraping together investors for its modest $19,000 budget, rather than allowing it to languish for years in the vast “airplane hangar of scripts by aspiring writers with broken dreams.”

“And I really don’t want the play produced by anyone else,” he added. “I’d really just like to live or die, and if I die, I’ll die by my own sword. There will be no apologies or regrets.”

Staley only has one playwriting regret--his real first play, which was produced 20 years ago by Playwrights Horizon in New York. “The Country Club,” a coming-of-age play set in an Oklahoma fishing cabin and starring Tom Berenger, ran for five performances. “That was bad,” he confessed--and he’s stricken that effort from his writing resume.

Along with deciding not to play a role in the show, Staley also opted out of directing it. And he chose a woman, English actress and writer Vickery Turner--partly to calm his own fears about his ability to write the character of strong-willed political misfit Florence Harding.

“They can’t say this is a man’s idea of Florence Harding,” Staley said with a laugh.

Turner, probably best known for her work in BBC productions and on the London stage, said that Staley has nothing to worry about when it comes to writing women--or men. “He has an eerie knack for giving you real people, he has a great gift for language. It’s like you’re there,” she said. “I don’t think he realizes what he’s done. He’s humble to a fault.”

Staley was characteristically self-effacing in saying that he believes his 30-year acting career gives him a feel for language that may elude some writers. “I’ve been on ‘Wonder Woman’ and shows like that, and I know what lines don’t fit your mouth,” he cracked. “That’s what they should do with [auditioning] actors--don’t give them ‘Hamlet,’ give them something like ‘Wonder Woman’ and say, ‘Make that work!’ ”

It says something about their faith in the play that well-known actors Michael Shannon and Marcia Rodd are willing to portray the Hardings for a mere $15 per show.

Shannon, also a screenwriter and playwright (he and Turner co-wrote the film “Estes Park”) was in the midst of writing his own one-man show on the life of John F. Kennedy when Staley approached him about portraying Harding. He was happy to put one president on hold for the chance to explore the character of another.

“[Harding] was really a great mixture--he was obviously somebody who had great warmth of personality, who really liked people, but somebody who delegated a great deal, and it backfired on him,” Shannon said. “I think his real downfall was that tyranny of wanting to be liked.”

Shannon observed that Kennedy’s aristocratic East Coast upbringing made him a different type of politician than the Midwestern Harding, but noted that the two presidents shared a passion for the issue of civil rights. “This whole thing that Harding had ‘colored blood,’ dealing with that as he was growing up, gave him a real insight into injustice,” Shannon said. “But it also made him a person who would withhold judgment--he was too forgiving.”

Rodd had forgotten that Staley once played her boyfriend on an episode of the late ‘80s Fox television series “21 Jump Street”--but he reminded her when he asked her to portray Florence Harding. She jumped at the chance.

“If you are a woman over 50, you don’t very often get parts that are really challenging and exciting to do,” Rodd said. She added that she knew nothing of Florence Harding until she took the role, partly because traditional history books don’t provide many details about women. But it came as no surprise to Rodd to find echoes of first ladies Jacqueline Kennedy, Mamie Eisenhower and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the role of a first lady with a philandering husband.

“The same issues were there, 70, 80 years ago--and we act like they’re new every single time,” she said. “Graft, infidelity. I love bringing her out from under the shadows. Jim [Staley] wrote a really living, breathing, laughing, suffering human being.”

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“EVERYONE’S FRIEND,” Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Dates: Plays Thursdays to Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays 3 p.m. Ends Oct. 3. Prices: $12 to $15. Phone: (323) 655-8587.