Actress Annette Miller Returns to Playing Golda Meir – 'It's More Vital Right Now'

Annette Miller saw Golda Meir talk while still a student at Brandeis. It was a profound moment that presaged Miller's star-turn when, in 2002, she was given the script for William Gibson's 1977 solo play "Golda" – a play that hadn't been a particular success – and took to it so thoroughly that her suggestions to the playwright led to a new version, "Golda's Balcony," that proved a hit.

The role brought acclaim to Miller (as well as the Elliot Norton Award). The play then premiered on Broadway in 2003, with Tovah Feldshuh in the role, and famously became the longest-running female solo show the Great White Way had ever seen, with 14 previews and 493 performances.

Miller has been a principal player at the Shakespeare & Company theater in Lenox, Massachusetts for decades, but her career has spanned across the state and its borders. Her long list of roles has included productions at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge ("Nobody Dies on Friday"), Central Square Theater ("The Cherry Orchard"), Merrimack Repertory Theater at Liberty Hall ("The Glass Menagerie"), and the Theater Company ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"). She starred in a "Female Version" of "The Odd Couple" on Broadway, appeared on TV and in films ("The New Karate Kid," "Don't Look Up"), and her career has taken her as far as Russia, where, at the International Chekhov Festival, she starred in "The Seagull." She also has memorably played such real-life individuals as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally's "Master Class," Martha Mitchell in Jodi Rothe's "Martha Mitchell Calling," and Diana Vreeland in "Full Gallop," a solo piece written by Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson on the life of the great fashion editor.

But "Golda's Balcony" has remained a touchstone. The solo play encapsules Golda Meir's long and storied life as a proponent for the State of Israel before there was a State of Israel. In the role, Miller recounts Meir's work for a Jewish state in Milwaukee in the 1910s, her immigration to Palestine and life on a kibbutz in 1921, her fundraising to defend Israel in its nascent post-World War II days, and her premiership as the young country's head of state from 1969 - 1974, during which time the 1973 Yom Kippur war tested her mettle and that of the fledgling Jewish homeland. Meir unflinchingly led Israel to victory in that conflict, but in Gibson's script – set at the end of Meir's life – Golda remains haunted by the price, paid in blood, for the security of her nation.

Now Miller portrays Golda Meir once again. Following a revival of the play last summer in the Berkshires with Miller winning acclaim once again in the role, Shakespeare & Company brings "Golda's Balcony" to the Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre at the Emerson Paramount Center from Feb. 23 – March 10.

Annette Miller chatted with EDGE about the play, her part in helping shape it, and how Golda Meir – the historical figure and the theatrical creation – have influenced her life.

EDGE: When you first read the script, what made you want to do the show?

Annette Miller: I was blown away because Bill Gibson is such a good writer. Returning to this script at different times in our history, [with] what's happening in the world, is amazing. I wonder now: When I first did it in 2002, what was I really drawing from? I was drawing from my actor's ability to imagine the time in 1973 [when] she got that phone call that [Israel had been] attacked. Now, it's right there in front of me. It's so present. So, to me, the whole script is fuller, it's more important.... it's just more vital right now.

EDGE: You were in a revival of the play last summer, but was the upcoming production at the Emerson Paramount Center already in the works when the events of October 7 took place?

Annette Miller: A year ago January, the artistic director [of Shakespeare and Company] and I had been talking and he said, "What about reviving 'Golda'?" – which people were saying to me before the protests [in Israel against the government's plan to retool the judiciary]. I always thought how prescient artists can be. There's something going on, and we kind of feel it, and then there it is in front of you.

Then the show was so successful this summer. I mean, we sold out! Shakespeare and Company said, "Listen, we really should move this," so, we started trying to see if [we could get it staged in] Boston, my hometown. I had a lot of people here who said, "We'd love to see it," and we started doing negotiations and finding a theater – which wasn't the easiest thing to do in September, when all the seasons are decided. And then October 7 [happened].

[At that point] it became more desperate on our part to get this play in. It was so necessary – necessary for people to gather, necessary for the Jewish community to look at it as a community, to hear a voice that would guide them through and give them some sort of basis.

We didn't really nail the theater down until, I think, November. We had thought of bringing it in in January, but that it was just too close, and we just couldn't, so we're back here in February.

EDGE: You had a hand in shaping the script to its current form.

Annette Miller: We gave it a reading for 25 or 30 invited guests, and the response was great. But it was written in two acts, and we did the reading with me finishing the first act when she's speaking to the [Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds] and asking for money, and then it ends. "It's up to you!" she says, [and] I walk offstage.

I said to Bill, backstage, "Why did I come off? Because I'm going back on in the same place." He said, "Well, you can't stay on for two hours." I said, "I could certainly do 90 minutes." And he said, "Sure." He let Danny Kudrow – a marvelous, wonderful, brilliant director from Israel – and I work on it, and he okayed [our cuts], or he didn't okay it, [but] he took it on. It was just wonderful [to be allowed such input].

EDGE: Recent history being what it is, are the things you'd want to restore or things you'd want to change about the script again? Or do you think that the script as it has been all these years is still exactly what we need to see?

Annette Miller: It's exactly what we need, because it's not a preachy show, it's her journey. I'm 20 years older; I'm closer to her age now than I was than I was when I did it then – I think I'm past her age now – and she's looking at her life. She knows the choices she made, she knows the problems, but she has no regrets. The only regret she has, which is why she resigned, is that she lost 3,000 boys [in the defense of Israel during the Yom Kippur war]. I don't think she ever forgave herself for that, ever. But she doesn't regret her life's journey; she says, "Failure is not my story. Where nothing was, Israel is." And this is true. This is at the bottom of it.

EDGE: You mention being closer to Golda Meir's age now. Has your relationship to the character in the play changed over time?

Annette Miller: It's got to be [the case that it has]. First of all, I never play what I did the night before. I'm always playing something where I am now. So now, 20 years later, when I say I'm "telling you a few tales from my life," I understand now. I can understand her review of her life more.

EDGE: You actually saw Golda Meir talk during your time as a student at Brandeis. That must have been a powerful moment. It must have influenced women of the time to grasp their own power.

Annette Miller: It's not even the sense of power as so much as the sense of having control of your own destiny, to be able to go for it. That's what she did. She speaks about her own personal independence [in] 1928, when she decided that she could not any longer live in the way she was living, just in two rooms in Jerusalem. She had to go where she could make a difference. The work was harder and the money was less, but there was an inner calling [she had] to follow. She's got quite a mission, and it's invigorating – easier to accomplish on stage than in life.

[Laughter]

I probably didn't know what I was doing when I first did "Golda." Now I'm doing it over again [I think I understand her more]. I am so full of Golda now. I don't know where everyone gets the idea that, "Well, as you get older it's time to relax and sit back." Why? There's still work to be done!

"Golda's Balcony" plays at the Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre at the Emerson Paramount Center from Feb. 23 – March 10. For more information follow this link.