“Golda’s balcony” was the name given to the observation point in the secret Israeli nuclear weapons facility at Dimona, where in the ’70s prime minister Meir watched their construction and pondered the use of those devastating weapons. “A view into hell,” she would call it.

It was a long road to the PM’s office for this idealistic Jewish girl born in Kiev and educated in Milwaukee, who became a committed Zionist, moved to Israel and eventually would have a hand in the birth of the Israeli state. Twenty years later (in 1969), she would be asked to take over the government after the sudden death of prime minister Levi Eshkol.

Along the way, Goldie Mabovitch became the wife of sign painter Morris Meyerson (an apolitical man with “a beautiful soul”) and had two children, about whom she would forever feel guilty of neglect as she found herself going off to meetings rather than staying home with them and “making matzo balls.”

Now she sits in her bathrobe, puffing on a cigarette.

“I’m at the end of my story,” she tells us, as she launches into reminiscences of her life as the “Iron Lady” – and the first female prime minister of Israel.

The backdrop for Golda’s Balcony is the runup to the 1973 Yom Kippur war and what she reports as “the darkest night of my life” when, after an all-night meeting with her generals, she had to decide whether to arm Israeli planes with nuclear weapons. The decision hinged on the U.S. and President Nixon’s promise of F-4 bombers and conventional weapons.

Tovah Feldshuh, who got her acting start 28 years ago here at the Old Globe Theatre and now returns as the 2010 Shiley Artist-in-Residence, plays Meir through May 30 in the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history – William Gibson’s Golda’s Balcony.

This memory play jumps around in time, as memory does. We see Feldshuh acting girlish when the young Golda meets Morris, then stern as Golda’s mom, kindly but unhappy as Morris, complaining that the kids are growing up without a mother, and pretentious (and hilarious) as U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as Golda the PM negotiates for military hardware.

It’s a bravura, tour de force performance without a false note, aided by back projections of the players and dramatic lighting and sound by Jeff Croiter and Alex Hawthorn, respectively.

“What happens when idealism becomes power?” she asks. “How many worlds are we entitled to destroy?”

There is no attempt at an even-handed presentation of the Arab-Israeli conflict here: this is Golda’s story. She sums up the problem this way: “There will be peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews.”

Feldshuh is a wonder, and Golda’s Balcony is a not-to-be-missed theatrical event.

Golda’s Balcony plays thorugh May 3, 2010 at the Old Globe Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets call (619) 23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.

The “High Priestess of Soul” may be remembered as much for her commitment to the civil rights movement as for her amazing low alto-to-tenor voice, gutsy, driving style, eclectic musical choices and flair for improvisation.

The life and artistry of Nina Simone is memorialized in Ira Aldridge Repertory Players’ lovely production of Nina, onstage through May 23 at the Sunset Temple in North Park. Calvin Manson, IARP artistic director, wrote and directed this loving musical tribute, which includes many of the songs for which she is best known.

One of eight children born into poverty in North Carolina, Eunice Kathleen Waymon began playing piano by ear in 1936 at the age of 3, and was playing regularly in church by the time she was 6. She made her concert debut – and her first civil rights stand – at 12, when her parents were asked to vacate their front-row seats so white people could sit there. The child refused to play until they were re-seated in the front.

She taught piano to fund her studies at Juilliard, hoping for a scholarship to the prestigious Curtis Institute that would propel her to her goal – a career as a concert pianist. But despite her obvious musical gifts and a fine audition, she was denied a scholarship, for which she always blamed racism.

To make a living, she shifted gears and began to work in clubs. Told she would also have to sing, she changed her name to Nina Simone so her strict, ordained minister mother wouldn’t be embarrassed that she was involved in “the devil’s music.”

Her eclectic musical style – blues, pop, soul, jazz, folk – and that incredible voice made her an audience favorite. But her experiences drew her to the civil right struggles of the ’60s. The murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham that killed four black children inspired Simone to write “Mississippi Goddam;” from then on she included at least one civil rights message in each recording as she already did in her live performances.

Manson has cast four women as Nina, representing different ages and different aspects of her personality and voice. The youngest – and in some ways most astonishing – is 16-year-old Sarah Roy, a junior at a performing arts magnet school, who has a pretty good set of pipes for someone her age and just needs a bit more experience and stage presence.

Nicole Bradley (in a long black dress) plays Simone on the verge of stardom, singing “Balm in Gilead” and “Liberian Calypso” with verve and feeling.

Janice Edwards nearly brings down the house with her portrayal of Nina the angry activist, wailing on “Mississippi Goddam,” “I Cast a Spell on You” and then shifting gears for the much quieter “The Look of Love.”

Finally, Ayanna Hobson portrays Nina the exile (Simone left the U.S for good in 1991, settled in Europe and died in France in 2003), singing “Strange Fruit,” “Trouble in Mind” and “Love Me or Leave Me.”

Local sidelight: San Diego is home to one of Nina Simone’s brothers, Dr. Carroll Waymon, retired SDSU and Mesa College professor, who reports in the program notes that Nina accompanied her 14-year-old brother on his concert singing tour.

Thanks to Calvin Manson for this lovely tribute to the singer, song writer and activist whose songs are still often heard in movie soundtracks. Nina is a fitting preparation for the film about her life starring Mary J. Blige, scheduled for a 2012 release.

Nina plays through May 23, 2010 at Sunset Temple, 3911 Kansas Street in North Park. Friday and Saturday, dinner at 6:30 and show at 8 p.m.; Sunday, dinner at 3 and show at 4:15 p.m. For tickets call (619) 283-4574 or visit www.iarpplayers.org.