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Golda's Balcony
To many, a solid 90 minutes about Israeli history is bound to sound as palatable as a plate of gefilte fish. Better to see the excellent Golda’s Balcony for what it really is: a show about the drive to survive at all costs and the guilt that comes with it. It’s also a gripping one-woman play centered on one of the 20th century’s toughest leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who was born in Russia in 1898, grew up in Milwaukee and eventually became one of the founders of the state of Israel.
As Meir, Brooks projects ease and humor, mixing Meir’s tough-Jewish-grandma persona with weighty material about, among other things, how she readily sacrificed her marriage to her ambition and how Israel almost blew the Cold War wide open, secretly arming nuclear missiles during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The jumps in chronology, from Meir’s early childhood up through her seventies, may send audiences scurrying to Wikipedia afterward. But this does little to detract from the tale’s grip, which grows ever-stronger through Israel’s fight for statehood and up to the brink of nuclear attack.
Brooks embodies, variously, Henry Kissinger, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Meir’s beleaguered husband, Morris, all without losing the voice of Meir herself. Brooks’s Meir also embodies, movingly, the burning Jewish desire for a homeland without losing sight of what happens when idealism is backed by killing force: “I begin with the redemption of the human race,” she sighs, “and end up in the munitions business.”
