Fresh from her Tony-nominated, record-breaking New York run, Tovah Feldshuh has brought the one woman show, Goldas Balcony, to the Wadsworth Theatre in West Los Angeles. Golda, of course, is Golda Meir, Israels Prime Minister from 1969 to 1974.Her balcony refers to both her balcony in Tel Aviv where she literally viewed Israels evolution and the secret observation post (dubbed Goldas Balcony by the employees of Israels secret nuclear plant, Demona) where, as prime minister she, who did not know how [her] car worked, watched Israel become a nuclear power. Eighty year old Golda, sick with leukemia, plagued by phlebitis and arthritis, reflects on her life with the vigor of a young woman and the philosophical distance of an old woman.
It comes as no surprise that Goldas Balcony is a history of Israels first quarter century, but more than just a political history, it is the story of an extraordinary woman, looking back over her life, who did not fit the proper female mold, fighting her way to prominence before feminism, like it or not, was a household word.
With no apparent role models, Meir began her forceful social protests as a teenager in Milwaukee. Her father, mortified by his publicly outspoken daughter, told her when you are a man they will let you talk in the synagogue.Protest she did, following her own convictions to move away from Milwaukee after the eighth grade when her family told her to leave school to work in the family store. She married a man who shared her ideals but not her crusading spirit and and moved to a Kibbutz in Israel. Though guilt tugged at her about the effect her devotion to the Zionist cause and her embrace of power had upon her children, she never wavered from her dedication to Israel in a way that has always been admired in men but which is often looked at with suspicion when demonstrated by a woman.
Meirs Zionism was fiercely secular, a position which has all but disappeared in todays politics.Her passionate, honest, and earthy directness, unfiltered by focus groups, comes as a breath of fresh air after the recent American elections.Is it even possible for a politician in a major power to present him or herself so nakedly now? Would a public so accustomed to the marketers phrase understand the complexities? Often criticized for being responsible for Israels being caught unprepared in the Yom Kippur war, Meir was none the less a formidable leader of her people and her cause; the means to an end are not always pretty and not always best summed up by a sound bite.
Feldshuh, a lithe, pert and petite 52-year-old actor, is unrecognizable as the eighty year old Golda. In the masterly cosmetic overhaul by John Caglione, Jr. (makeup), Jess Goldstein (costume) and Paul Huntley (wig), she takes on the lumpy shape, swollen legs, and curved spine of an octogenarian, still walking solidly in her old-lady, sensible shoes, but with fire still burning inside and a caustic wit. People who change history are not always the easiest to be around. There is no doubt; Feldshuh is not an outsider. Adopting accents that are eerily familiar to anyone who had an eastern European grandparent, she gives life to many historical and family figures, effectively and sparingly augmented by photos projected on a generic ancient wall.Set Designer, Anna Louizos, created this backdrop which, through the skillful projections (Batwin &Robbins Productions) becomes everything from the Wailing Wall to a nuclear plant.Although just one woman, and one ninety minute act, the overall effect is of a stage peopled by a full cast and varied by multiple scene changes.