With fact blended with fiction, "Frost/Nixon," the Tony Award-winning drama by Peter Morgan opening Wednesday at Manoa Valley Theatre, unites two Island actors who are reliving their disdain for a disgraced president through the play.

Result: a cathartic experience, tempered with some revelations.

Ned Van Zandt as British talk show host David Frost and Bill Ogilvie as Richard Nixon recreate that tense, seesawing drama, based on a historic television interview by Frost, who tried to get the ridiculed U.S. president to apologize for his role in the Watergate scandal.

The play, opening a week after the presidential election, precedes the movie version arriving Dec. 5 that reunites the original stage actors Michael Sheen (Frost) and Frank Langella (Nixon) in the title roles. So it's a very timely addition to MVT's 40th season.

The task for Van Zandt and Ogilvie was to approach their respective roles with decided neutrality, despite their personal feelings, and avoid impersonation in the Rich Little-type school of mockery.

"I was a passionate college student and an acting major at NYU (New York University) when the whole Watergate thing happened," said Van Zandt, a onetime Broadway actor who has rekindled his Island ties by relocating back home.

"I remember the era — fiercely partisan — much like today," he said, alluding to the Barack Obama/John McCain divide. "But doing the play, I have found my feelings softened, not for what he did, but because I got to know the man a little, through Bill's portrayal."

"I remember where I was when I saw the interview," Ogilvie said of Frost's verbal gymnastics with Nixon, one of television's most widely watched events of 1977. "I was in Puerto Rico, visiting relatives; they hated Nixon, like me.

"So when Dwight Martin (MVT's producing director) approached me to do Nixon, I was scared. ... I was worried about giving him a fair performance ... of not being biased. I did a lot of research and lo and behold, he's a man who's all messed up."

When director Bree Bumatai approached Van Zandt to tackle Frost, he said he was mildly shocked. "I've played different ethnicities like a Brit on Broadway, and even a Czech ('The Iceman Cometh'), but this one was a particular challenge. For starting points, it's his voice: Frost was a stickler for voice, accent, cadence. But I didn't want an impersonation but a representation of Frost. So I watched the (TV) interview."

Ogilvie also is shunning a simple impersonation. "I want to give an essence of Nixon, just be an impressionist," he said. "None of that I-am-not-a crook stuff. He was sincere; he meant well, in a way. It was the people around him that were more or less in charge, ultimately. One thing I learned (through research): I had compassion, to some degree. I'm not doing (this role) for the politics, I'm doing it for the art (the theater)."

Van Zandt left our shores in the early 1990s and has returned to a different stage climate here: lots more happening, lots more substance. Besides MVT (and his first time on stage with ol' buddy Ogilvie), he also has devoted time to Hawaii Repertory Theatre.

"They don't pay well here for theater, unlike Broadway, but I'm having a ball," Van Zandt said.

And he waited tirelessly for a couple years ... but finally got a call for a role on ABC's filmed- in-Hawai'i series "Lost."

He said "Frost/Nixon" is powerful drama. "It's old-fashioned and it works, synthesizing moments and character. It's got rapid pace."

The playwright, Peter Morgan, is noted for his screenplay of "The Queen" and "The Last King of Scotland," Oscar-winning films about Queen Elizabeth and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, respectively.

"For me, this play ultimately says, in our hearts, we don't hate him," Ogilvie said of Nixon.