Balcony Scene

Speaking of the Middle East (and of biopics), I attended the play Golda's Balcony, the life and times of Golda Meir. Fascinating, overwrought, well-done. This one-woman show stars Tovah Feldshuh as the Russian-born (oops, Ukrainian-born), Milwaukee-raised, eager socialist and Zionist, then Prime Minister of Israel.

The production is heavy on strobe lights and machine-gun sound effects -- not a light night at the theater at all. But then again, this is the story of the birth and subsequent continual struggle for existence of the Jewish state.

There's plenty of cross-cutting between Meir's failed marriage to her lukewarm-Zionist husband and her rise to power. I can't comment on the accuracy of some of the history or to Feldshus's characterization, but both strike me as reasonably true.

The critical moment is well-known: During the Yom Kippur was in 1973, Israel armed bombers with nuclear warheads to be used as a last resort. According to the play, this was more a game of chicken with the United States, in order to force Nixon to give up the necessary fighter planes with which Israel was able to achieve air dominance and carry the day. (Nixon, you might recall, had other things on his mind in '73).

And so a nation created to ensure no more genocide ("Never Again"!) was prepared to use nuclear weapons in its defense. Quite a paradox.

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Note the use of the Internet Broadway Database. Modeled after the wodnerful Internet Movie Database, but without nearly as much info, at least yet. Still it's neat to see that the author of this play, William Gibson, got his start on Broadway by writing The Miracle Worker as his second play.