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Interviews
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Tovah Feldshuh - Tony Best Actress Nominee
Philip Fisher meets Tovah Feldshuch who has just been nominated for a Tony Award in the Best Actress category for Golda's Balcony. Meeting an Israeli Prime Minister will always be a special experience. This is far more the case when the lady in question has been dead for 25 years and she appears, with her feet up, in a luxurious dressing room at a Broadway theatre. Golda Meir is a legend and currentlyGolda's Balcony, a play based on her life, is the hottest ticket of any straight play on Broadway. Tony-nominated actress Tovah Feldshuh granted this interview about the character that she portrays and the politics of Zionism and Judaism on the day after she played the part for the 100th time at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway. Miss Feldshuh, who played Yentl on stage, has appeared in every medium and won more awards than one can list. Her TV work includes regular appearances in Law and Order as Danielle Melnick for which she received an Emmy nomination. On film recently, she won an award for her part in Kissing Jessica Stein.
Already her performance as the great Israeli stateswoman has won her the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Best Actress awards. However, she still covets the Tony that she has so far been nominated for on three - now four! - occasions. That Tony could be just around the corner for what this versatile actress describes as "the greatest role of my career". With a false nose and dark eyebrows, courtesy of an Oscar-winning make-up artist, Miss Feldshuh bears more than a passing resemblance to a woman some 25 years older than she is. The play was written by the veteran William Gibson, a Catholic, best known for The Miracle Worker and approaching 90. It looks at the already cancer-riddled but chain-smoking Golda Meir from the perspective of her military bunker at a critical moment in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 when as the actress says "Israel's intelligence was caught with its pants down". This was a point where Israelis felt totally isolated as their Soviet-backed enemy attacked on all fronts, while Nixon and Kissinger dithered and Mrs Meir's finger was poised to start a nuclear holocaust. Golda's Balcony is far more than a thriller about war. It also explores the life of an exceptional woman. Golda Meir was born in Russia, brought up in Milwaukee and became a pioneer in Palestine and, after 1948, Israel. In a male-dominated society, she overcame natural disadvantages and reluctantly sacrificed her family life for the sake of her ambition for her country and herself. Tovah Feldshuh is well cast in the part of a strong, determined woman who has a need to achieve, but never loses her sense of humour. If one met her at a party, she would come across as a high-flying businesswoman or maybe a lawyer, like her father. She is also a caring person with humanist inclinations and is devastated by the continuing conflict in Israel. She firmly believes that "Israel wants peace, they want to be left alone". Like Golda Meir, the sometimes strident Miss Feldshuh seems to feel the loss of every soldier and civilian personally and loves the fact that this is a play "screaming for peace in the belly of war". She also has a mother's perspective when she empathises with those who suffer on both sides of the conflict. As she puts it, "Do we give birth to children so we can send them to die? I just don't accept that". The issues that the Israeli Prime Minister had to address have sadly not changed all that much in the following thirty years and this is a fact that clearly pains the Broadway star. Becoming Golda Meir has had an affect on Miss Feldshuh. "I've become much more of a political animal" she says. She quotes liberally from Golda Meir throughout the interview. In particular she focuses on the constant messages desiring peace and optimistically believes that ultimately, "We will fall as a human race into the lake of peace". Miss Feldshuh has a great sense of Jewish identity and mourns the fact that the community is diminishing as a result of secularisation as 50% of the community intermarries. The way that she expresses it is "If you want to get rid of the Jews, just love them to death". As well as her Jewish identity, she also loves the pluralism of the United States and happily contrasts the position now with that when her father graduated and faced quota restrictions. Miss Feldshuh feels that being Jewish has aided her in her career. "In my journey as an artist I tried to master bringing the life of characters forth in every part I've played but it may have been easier to bring the life of Jewish characters forth because of my own background". Tovah Feldshuh is a very determined individual and an inveterate marketeer. She would love to continue her second life as Golda Meir for a great deal longer on Broadway. She also feels that in time, it could very successfully transfer to a small West End Theatre and then around the world. That would be a good thing as it will allow a much wider audience to see a great performance and to get under then skin of a unique political lady.
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