Benjamin Netanyahu has survived coalition crises, wars, elections beyond counting and decades of sketch comedians doing his voice. Now Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is about to face a new arena: the theater.
Producer Assi Stav, who brought “Hair,” “Mabrokh” and “Yasso” to Israeli stages, is developing a play about Netanyahu’s life. Its working title is simply “Bibi Netanyahu,” Srugim and Maariv reported Wednesday, after the project was first revealed on Guy Pines’s entertainment show. The production will revisit the defining moments of his personal life and political career, from his early years to the decisions that shaped Israel over three decades.
Anyone hoping to know who gets the role of a lifetime will have to wait. The script is still being written, and the production is now searching for the actor who will play the prime minister and the actress who will play his wife, Sara. Stav told N12 that a writer and director have not yet been chosen either, though several leading directors have been approached. The current target is to open in about a year.
“Bibi is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon,” Stav said. He added that the play is meant to challenge audiences and to examine Israeli society as a whole, not just the man at its center.
Stav told N12 that the show will be neither a tribute nor a parody, and that he does not plan to tell viewers what to think. He admitted that the project has already drawn strong reactions from both directions, with some people supportive and others openly baffled that the producer of the anti-war musical “Hair” would take it on. His answer is that he is only building the stage and the audience can judge for itself.
That leaves the casting director with a daunting job. Israelis know Netanyahu’s baritone, his English and his podium gestures better than those of almost any public figure alive. Whoever steps into the role will have to convince an audience that has been watching the real thing for more than 30 years.
It will not be the family’s first encounter with the stage. The prime minister’s brother, Iddo Netanyahu, is a playwright whose works have been produced in Italy, Russia, the United States and at Tel Aviv’s Beit Lessin theater.
