'Golda's Balcony' probes the urgent choices of Israel's first female premier

Growing up, I’d heard rumors that the president of the United States could hit a button that would launch nuclear weapons. The thought of such a button and the power it could wield frightened me. How could one person have the power to obliterate others, I wondered. Later, I learned that using nuclear weapons is a bit more complicated than just pressing a button, but the idea of such weaponry is no less terrifying.

Shakespeare & Company’s production of “Golda’s Balcony” is focused on the life of the first (and only female) Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. It’s 1973 and the Yom Kippur or Ramadan War (an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria that was in conflict with Israel) is at hand. The hellish decision to deploy nuclear weapons or to wait for U.S. aid rests on her shoulders. The play, written by William Gibson, a playwright and novelist who also wrote “The Miracle Worker,” focuses solely on this moment in history and imagines the turmoil Meir, an immigrant who also lived in America for a time, must have felt in the face of a weighty decision.

Actor Annette Miller, known for “Don’t Look Up” and “The Next Karate Kid,” has portrayed Meir before. It’s a role she originated in 2002 and for which she won an Elliot Norton. Last summer, the show starring Miller had a sold-out run in the Berkshires. Now, this one-woman show at the Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre at the Emerson Paramount Center runs through March 10.

Under the direction of Daniel Gidron, Miller’s Meir paces back and forth in her office, sharing bits about her background and detailing the phone calls she made and the relationships she worked to inform her wartime deliberations. Despite the high-stakes decision — set to a loud ticking clock to convey its urgency — I would have preferred to hear even more about how she moved up the ranks. When Miller’s Meir talks of how women of the time lived so small — relegated to matzo-ball making in kitchens she says, how they couldn’t speak in synagogues, and even how she feared marriage might shrink her and thwart her ambitions — that’s what I found most interesting. Another story Meir, who suffered from lymphoma, told that stuck with me was about visiting war refugees. During that visit, a child gave her a bouquet of paper flowers.

Even with her misgivings, Meir did marry Morris Meyerson and spent some time making matzo balls in the kitchen. But she also hob-knobbed with other influential world leaders as the fourth prime minister. Gibson’s play was named the longest-running one-person show in Broadway history and was adapted for a film of the same name starring Tovah Feldshuh in 2019.

By the show’s end, which runs for an hour and 40 minutes, I left thinking about a line in the play in which Meir comments on how closely the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, is to the Arabic word for peace, salaam. And as wars rage on around the world, I wonder if we may ever achieve it.

Shakespeare & Company’s production of “Golda’s Balcony” runs through March 10 at Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre at the Emerson Paramount Center.