Theater Review: 'Oh God'

It's a funny, witty, often brilliant text that asks some intriguing questions about the nature of the Deity and our relationship to Him.

By HELEN KAYE
reading lady 88 224 (photo credit: Courtesy )
reading lady 88 224
(photo credit: Courtesy )
Oh God By Anat Gov Directed by Edna Mazia Cameri Theater March 27 Oh my! Oh wow! Anat Gov's Oh God is a treasure. It's a funny, witty, poignant, often brilliant text that asks some intriguing questions about the nature of the Deity and our relationship to Him, all in a delightful 80 minutes that whisk by like five. Ella (Shiri Golan) is a psychologist, a single mother living with her autistic son, Lior, (Avihud Tidhar). She gets a mysterious phone call from a man who insists on an immediate session. The new client is God (Yossi Pollak-Pasternak), and he's very depressed, so depressed that he's about to destroy His creation, and with no survivors this time. Ella, who has some painful issues of her own, has to stop Him, somehow, in one clinical hour. God and Ella battle. They go at it hammer and tongs, and with quotes, from Genesis to the Book of Job, where it all started to go terribly awry. "I'm not sure I want to live in a world without God," bleakly says Ella at one point. "Help me!" God begs. The ending is a gentle descant to what's gone before. As God, Pollack has a desperate and moving majesty, shot through with humor. Ella's intensity could get boring, but Golan keeps her attractively genuine, and Tidhar cameos beautifully as Lior, because in essence, Oh God is a two person play. Director Mazia's touch is light but sure, and designer Orna Smorgonsky has created a living room-cum-office set that looks, for once, as if it's actually inhabited. Oh please! Go see it.