Shaw Theatre, London NW1
It is not hard to see why Tovah Feldshuh received a Tony nomination on Broadway.
It is the Yom Kippur War and Feldshuh’s croaky-voiced Golda Meir cuts a lonely figure puffing on endless cigarettes and grappling with military and moral dilemmas.
But what energises Scott Schwartz’s production are the figures in Meir’s political and personal life — the emotionally austere Kissinger, a surprisingly panicky Moshe Dayan, a lugubrious King Abdullah of Jordan and, during the flashback scenes, a young, flirtatious Golda in Milwaukee, where the future Israeli leader was raised. All these supply Feldshuh with a variety of characters to sink her teeth into.