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GRADE: A
Golda's Balcony -- OK, I'll admit that playwright William Gibson's portrait of Golda Meir often comes too close to turning the dowdy one-time Israeli prime minister into a Harrison Ford action hero. But at age 90, the man who gave us The Miracle Worker back in 1959 hasn't lost the knack of delivering a rip-roaring, crowd-pleasing story, thick with heavy import.
He's helped by a fast-paced production directed by Scott Schwartz, with multimedia projections that whisk us across the hemispheres, spanning Golda's Milwaukee girlhood, her frontier motherhood in an Israeli kibbutz, and her ascent to world renown as a UN ambassador and chief-of-state. Explosive sound effects grab us by the neck and return us, again and again, to the grim dilemma Meir faced in October 1973 when Israel was withstanding the infamous Yom Kippur bombardment of her Arab neighbors.
Israel desperately needed conventional weapons from the US to defend itself. But the 75-year-old Meir also had the option of nuclear retaliation. There were 13 A-bombs, hastily assembled in a secret underground facility known as "Dimona" when the 1973 hostilities erupted. By missile and by fighter planes, this cache was poised to trigger a possible worldwide holocaust if conventional reinforcements didn't arrive.
For a one-woman show, Golda's Balcony achieves amazing dramatic tension with all its bombs and whistles. At its core is an amazing performance by Tovah Feldshuh as Golda. She captures the humor, the toughness, and the commonsense of the great lady -- with the occasional side-splitting impression of Henry Kissinger. We get a whole range of historical characters from Feldshuh, but whenever we approach the tender, maternal side of Golda, Gibson quashes the sentimentality with a sudden salvo of aerial munitions.
The repeated device becomes slickly predictable and robs this Golda of her full agony and humanity. But when we're perched on Golda's underground nuclear balcony, we're being treated to a precious historical excavation.
GRADE: A-
Anna in the Tropics -- Nilo Cruz has established that young playwrights can win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize before their work is produced in New York. Or Jersey. The current production starring TV heartthrob Jimmy Smits, catapulted to Broadway by the prestige of the Pulitzer, is a transplanted production that first played in Princeton.
Cruz takes us authoritatively to 1929 Tampa, where the fine art of hand-rolling cigars is giving way at local cigar factories to the efficiency and profitability of machine production. Santiago, who drinks and gambles more than is prudent, is one of the last holdouts against the tide of mechanization. At his factory, he still employs a professional lector to read literary classics to the workers, helping them through the tedium of rolling fine cigars -- while giving them a taste of high culture.
Smits plays the dapper lector Juan Julian, a quietly charismatic troubadour who is proud of his profession and bitterly aware of its imminent extinction. He brings seething sexual tensions to Santiago's circle, already enmeshed in the futile struggle of tradition, elegance, and craftsmanship to overcome the tide of mass-market commercialism.
As Juan reads Anna Karenina to the workers, Santiago's married daughter, Conchita, falls victim to his allure and follows in Anna's adulterous footsteps. Jealousies are aroused not only in Conchita's husband, but also in her younger sister who worships Juan and in the factory's proponent of change -- who has his lecherous eye on that virginal younger sister.
Smits generates sufficient electricity to convincingly foment this tragic storm -- because so much of his passion is wrapped into the art that is his livelihood. David Dayas as Chech, the mouthpiece of modernity, is a steely, imploding adversary. But Emily Mann's lame direction doesn't do the lyrical script any favors, and she doesn't light a Latin fire in any of the women in her cast -- or, at times, even audibility. Peter Kaczorowski's resourceful lighting helps overcome the shortcomings of Robert Brill's moribund set design, which really isn't good enough for Charlotte.
Anna signals the arrival of a powerful new Hispanic voice on the American scene. Cruz's message rings true, clear, and passionate. Like August Wilson, Cruz taps into a part of ourselves that most of us have never known. Hopefully, this vital new playwright's artistry will mature as he shows us more.
GRADE: B
I Am My Own Wife -- No doubt about it, Jefferson Mays's performance as Charlotte von Mahlsdorff is a wonder to behold. And Berlin's most celebrated transvestite, nee Lothar Berfelde, is a fascinating survivor. She escaped detection during the last gasp of the Nazi regime and somehow thrived in East Berlin under Communism, openly flaunting her lifestyle while establishing the Grnderzeit Museum of antique furnishings.