The dynamic Tovah Feldshuh - who certainly can do glamour - avoids it in her recreation of an aging Golda Meier. But she wonderfully evokes the courage and revolutionary career of this powerful and earthy woman who fought for the creation of the State of Israel and, as Prime Minister, guided it through very dark times. The "Balcony" of the title has a double-meaning: not only a ledge jutting out from an apartment-block, but also a podium deep underground, where Golda is able to oversee the manufacture of weapons of mass destructino - namely namely the atomic-bombs Israelis created over thirty years ago to protect their fragile Zionist State from its many Arab enemies.
A high point of this mono-drama is Golda's recalling her desperate phone-calls to Henry Kissinger to get planes, tanks, and weapons immediately during the 1973 conflict with five Arab Armies. Her announced fear was that, if Israel were to be defeated, Jews would effectively cease to have an existence. So she had armed her remaining planes with atomic-bombs and threatened Kissinger & President Nixon with using them if the United States did not come to Israel's aid with more conventional weapons. Golda recalls that Kissinger told her he was, first, Head of the National Security Council; second, Secretary of State, and only thirdly, a Jew. She ripostes: "Henry, here we read from right to left!" She got her planes & guns.
This tribute was written by the octogenarian playwright William Gibson - of Helen Keller fame - and he was as vigorously applauded as Feldshuh at the MET's opening down on Mercer Street.
