When in March of 1960 The Best Man opened on Broadway, Dwight D. Eisenhower was finishing his second term in the White House, Adlai Stevenson had launched a third attempt to win the Democratic nomination, and Harry S. Truman remained active in Democratic Party politics. The success of Gore Vidal’s comedy of political manners, which is set around a national convention at which two men are duking it out for the presidential nomination, generated a 15-month run. By the time the play closed, John F. Kennedy had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency.

The 2000 Broadway revival of the piece, which opened just before Bush and Gore faced off, chalked up another round of critical kudos for playwright Vidal. And even though it’s not a presidential election year, the current Cape Playhouse production summons up plenty of familiar sights and sound bytes. You don’t have to read far in today’s newspaper to recall one of Vidal’s most chilling lines: " There are no ends. There are only means. "

As a grandson of Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma and stepbrother of Jackie Kennedy (and a one-time failed congressional candidate himself), Vidal described what he knew, so it’s no wonder that the people on stage ring true. The way they have aged so well — and seem so contemporary 40-plus years after they were created — is either scary in its premonition or further proof of the unchanging realities of the national game of politics.

The Best Man is far from perfect in its dramaturgy. The play is saddled with tedious exposition about the secrets behind the public personae of the two leading candidates. But it’s saved by just enough cynicism and a cast of characters who are painted in a believable palette of shades of gray. The candidates are surrounded by the obligatory myths of the genre: their wives, a dragon lady who heads up the women’s wing of the party, a pair of campaign managers, and the reporters, pictured here as if they had stepped out of an earlier period play like The Front Page.

Vidal’s succeeds best in factoring in the fascinating character of the ex-president, Arthur Hockstader (think Truman), and building to a climax that transcends sit-com-land and aspires to the realm of memorable drama. Unfortunately, you have to sit through two-thirds of the piece before the payoff scene in which the two political rivals face each other on stage, after which the play builds to its prescient ending.

Despite efficient direction by Russell Treyz and a cast that comes trailing impressive credentials, the Cape production is lopsided in allowing veteran actor Gil Rogers, as the wily and controlling Hockstader, to steal every scene he’s in. Rogers is blessed with an old-fashioned stage voice of resonance and power, and that allows him to elbow aside a laid-back William R. Moses (Cole Gioberti on television’s Falcon Crest) in the role of upper-class Secretary of State William Russell and a subdued Billy Campbell (star of the small screen’s Once and Again) in what should be the flashier role of Senator Joseph Cantwell, Russell’s opposition. Russell is certainly based on Adlai Stevenson; Cantwell vibrates with intimations of Senator Joseph McCarthy lusting after power. Both Moses and Campbell could supply a bit more gusto to suggest characters worthy of a global milieu. Celia Weston, as the downtrodden Mrs. Russell, sticks too closely to the pre–Betty Friedan mind-set, even for a period portrayal.

Mihai Ciupe’s set design, a single hotel suite that flips between candidates by revolving the campaign poster on the center wall, sums up the overall sense of the evening as well as one theme of Vidal’s play — that the outlines and dialogue are unchanging, even as one face succeeds another through the years. Ciupe’s final poster is a collage of presidential portraits from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton, ordinary men, like Russell and Cantwell, who were transformed to fill an extraordinary office.