On the heels of Playhouse on Park’s
production of “Golda’s Balcony” comes TheatreWorks New Milford’s interpretation
of the story of the little Russian girl who grew to become one of the guiding
forces behind the creation of the State of Israel and who shepherded that young
country through one of its most trying times, the Yom Kippur war of 1973.
Written
by William Gibson, the author of “The Miracle Worker,” and directed by Jane
Farnol, the play uses the war as a frame that allows Golda Meir (Sonnie
Osborne) to reflect on her 80 some years, beginning with a memory of her carpenter
father hammering planks over windows to protect the family from the latest
Russian pogrom and ending with Meir, now Israel’s Prime Minister, ailing and
world-weary, blackmailing the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, into
providing vital military supplies for her struggling nation. Along the way, she
touches on her early years as a committed Zionist, her marriage to Morris
Meyerson, and her growing dedication to the idea of the Third Temple, that is,
the Jewish people who had returned to Palestine to recreate a homeland of their
own, all underscored by the defining question: what happens when those infused
by utopian ideals actually achieve power? Does a new Eden ensue, or does reality demand that one
decide whether to fight or flee (once again into the gas chambers)?
The
play opens with Meir confessing that she is tried, and that is one of the minor
problems with this production, for Osborne’s Meir is anything but tired. She
(or director Farnol) has opted to emphasize the firebrand side of the woman, so
even when she says she is weary – of war, of bloodletting, of the sacrifices
that she, her family, her nation and her people have been forced to make -- she
does so as if she is delivering one of the speeches the young Meir made at
socialist rallies in America during the early part of the twentieth century. In
other words, her delivery often belies the words she is saying.
The
script calls for Osborne to recreate many conversations: with her mother, with
her husband, with Kissinger, King Abdullah, David Ben-Gurion, General Moshe
Dayan, David Elazar (another Israeli general), Simcha Dinitz (Israeli
ambassador to the United States), Lou Kaddar (her female secretary) and Pope
Paul VI. The problem here is that with the exception of Kissinger, all of her
interlocutors sound the same, primarily because Osborne offers these
“conversations” with a rapid-fire delivery that does not allow for much nuance
or interpretation. One gets the feeling that she is aware that the play is
supposed to run approximately 90 minutes and she doesn’t want to go over her
time limit. I don’t think the audience would have minded sitting the extra 10
or 15 minutes that would have allowed Osborne to modulate her delivery so that
when she is issuing commands to her generals she spits out her words but when
she is talking with her husband, who never shared her commitment to a
hard-nosed, Kibbutz-style Zionism, she slows into rueful reflection.
This
is not to say that Osborne doesn’t have her shining moments – she’s especially
good in the aforementioned confrontations with her generals -- but the pacing
of the show turns what is essentially a theatrical memoir into more of a
polemic. Gibson has given the work a definite rise, climax and denouement, but
director Farnol doesn’t seemed attuned to this. Hence there is little emotional
release when Meir gets the call from Dinitz that helps is finally on the way
from a waffling United
States.
The
two venues – Playhouse on Park and Theaterworks New Milford – are distinctly
different, and that perhaps explains the variations in sets. However, the
Playhouse scenic design, created by Jo Winiarski, gave the audience the feeling
that Meir was operating out of a bunker, which enhanced the idea that she, and
by extension her nation, was under siege. In contrast, Theaterworks’ set
designer Richard Pettibone gives us walls made to look as if they are
constructed out of blocks of sandstone (perhaps seeking to evoke Jerusalem’s
Wailing Wall or the Masada fortress) with a small table and two chairs situated
stage center on a raked portion of the stage. It is evocative yet, since
stylized, lacks the gritty, under-seige feel that the Playhouse set added to
the production. However, Pettibone, in conjunction with Scott Wyshynski, have
created a lighting plot that accentuates both the light and the dark – and the
horrific – that is dealt with in the play.
In
sum, this “Golda’s Balcony” is a workmanlike effort marred mainly by no nod to
nuance or pacing. The Golda we get at the start is the Golda we get at the end,
and since she has not gone through any transformation, neither has the
audience.
“Golda’s
Balcony” plays on weekends through June 30. For tickets or more information
call 860-350-6863 or go to www.theatreworks.us
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