REVIEWS ...
Monday, April 23, 2007
And her name was . . . Golda
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
Director Joseph Adler has said that he wouldn't have produced Golda's Balcony if not for the fact that actress Lisa Morgan lives and works in South Florida.
See William Gibson's play at GableStage, and you'll understand why Adler was so single-minded about Morgan as his only choice for portraying the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
It's not that the Welsh-born actress resembles Meir; she doesn't, despite "aging" herself by dyeing her hair gray and donning a just-right frumpy suit (by costume designer Ellis Tillman). But her fierce, smart connection to the dramatic crisis, the extensive historical material and the engrossing storytelling of the play? That's the real deal.
Gibson's play, performed on Broadway by Tovah Feldshuh and on tour here by Valerie Harper, offers an introspective, complicated Meir who is much more than (as she describes the popular notion) the " ...Mommile Golda who makes chicken soup for her soldiers... "
Yes, she adds, she has done that. But she'd rather get to the heart of who she is, what Israel is. Take that pot of soup, she says, and " ...empty it all out for keeps, right now. At the bottom of the pot is blood."
So within a few minutes after the play begins, the playwright and Adler and Morgan underscore the character of the woman with whom we'll spend a taut 75 minutes: a driven Zionist who put Israel first, family second; a savvy politician bold enough to use nuclear weapons if Israel's survival were at stake but sane enough to move heaven and Earth in order not to launch them.
Gibson's script interweaves the personal history of the Russian-born Golda Mabovitch and 20th Century Jewish history -- though at times, they were one and the same. Moving around the sleek office where she is dealing with the crisis of 1973's Yom Kippur War, Meir also moves back and forth in time, recalling the pogroms of her early years in Russia, her transformation (once her family emigrated to Milwaukee) into a committed Zionist, her time as a young mother on a kibbutz in Palestine.
This Golda Meir is thoughtful, flawed, honest. As played by Morgan with weariness and strength, she is also a quick-witted woman unafraid to fight for herself and her country. Under Adler's beautifully paced direction, Morgan goes full out with Meir in crisis, then pulls back into the exploration of memories as historical film footage gives context to her words. But she never disconnects from the character or the power of Gibson's text.
The design team -- Tim Connelly (set), Jeff Quinn (lighting), Matt Corey (music and sound), Walter Collins (video) -- creates a potent sense of time and place in a minimalist but effective way. But in the end, it is Morgan -- the actress for whom Adler wisely waited -- who makes this exploration of Meir's life so completely absorbing.
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
There's so much to take in from Golda's Balcony
By Bill Hirschman
Golda's Balcony is not about one woman or one nation; it's about living with the consequences of your actions when every choice bears an incalculable cost to your soul.
Anyone invested in the fate of Israel will be moved by GableStage's retelling of the nation's darkest struggles as recounted by its indomitable prime minister, Golda Meir.
But the triumph of William Gibson's script, Joe Adler's direction and Lisa Morgan's tour de force portrayal is their resonating exploration of more universal questions: What is the loss to your humanity if you are willing to go to any lengths to achieve a humanitarian dream?
Gibson has transformed a stage staple, the biographical monodrama, into a meditation on the reality behind "hard choices" and "sacrifice."
Morgan, long acknowledged as one of our finest actresses, is on fire here. She incarnates a woman who has grown a seemingly rock-hard shell, but whose soul is secretly shredded by the knowledge of what each decision really means.
Morgan's Meir palpably agonizes over ethical paradoxes. Is it right to preserve the world you have created if you must destroy the worlds of innocent people around you?
Propelled by Adler, she hurtles through Gibson's torrent of facts and political maneuverings, made no easier for the audience by the script's random ricocheting among time periods. At some point, the audience stops processing the details and just clutches the passing emotions and themes.
In one heart-rending scene, Meir visits Jewish refugees detained in camps on Cyprus and waiting for a limited number of visas to British-held Palestine. She asks the adults -- many of them Holocaust survivors -- to surrender their slots on the boats to children who realistically represent the nascent country's best hope. Morgan melds a fierceness that comes from knowing you are right with the heartache of knowing you are asking the unaskable.
Morgan does not attempt a cabaret impersonation; she doesn't affix a false nose, as Tovah Feldshuh did in her Broadway success. But she and Adler catch Meir's driven idealism and warring dualities as she prowls the stage.
Tim Connelly deftly creates her spare, no-nonsense office. Jeff Quinn's ever-shifting lighting patterns paint a dozen distinct locales, and Walter Collins' video projections ensure that the single set never becomes visually static.
Bill Hirschman can be reached at muckrayk@aol.com.
