Imagine you’re a therapist. Your newest patient? God: creator of Heaven and Earth, currently depressed.
What sounds like a setup for a farce—The Sopranos, only this time it’s not the big guy but The Big Guy—becomes suddenly serious. He who fix’d his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter is not just depressed but suicidal. He’s thinking of ending it all. And by “it all” I mean everything, us included.
Born in 1953, Anat Gov was a prominent Israeli translator, screenplay writer, and playwright. In the 1970s, she joined the IDF’s military entertainment troupe, where she met her husband. Throughout her brief life (she died in 2012), she maintained strong loyalties to progressive causes and to Zionism. More than a thousand mourners attended her funeral.
Oh, My God, onstage thanks to Jewish Theater Grand Rapids April 17-May 3, is not her most famous play; that would be Happy End, a musical which explored her own experience battling the cancer that would go on to kill her. But it’s serious-minded and witty, funny and profound, wrestling with questions central to what it means to be human.
Which isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable. In one memorable moment, Ella, the therapist, asks if God wants to tell her how old He is. “5776,” he responds. “Last fall.” Questioning and funny: is there a better summary of Jewish literature writ large?
Director Brad Sytsma was on vacation in Ohio last summer when he first read the play. “It’s powerful and moving,” he said. “I knew this was something I could throw my creative energy behind. This is a play that can move audiences, can have them sit up and take notice.”
Sytsma first became involved with Jewish Theater after moving back to Grand Rapids in 2013, after college. He auditioned for Yentl, and has since been involved in seven or eight productions. The theater’s selection committee had sent him the script, hoping he was willing to come aboard. And he was.
He had several conversations about casting God. “Especially the way God’s written in the play,” he said. One thing God isn’t is one-note: as the play proceeds, he’s both the omnipotent, all-knowing God of the Old Testament—“someone who could be threatening, menacing,” Sytsma said—and someone much more vulnerable, even human. “He looks back at the past and wonders if He’s made mistakes. He questions decisions. ‘How do I move in in this world and make it a better place?”
It’s a question relevant to all of us. Unlike God, we’re limited, but that isn’t to say we’re powerless; we can impact others for better and worse. How do we ensure that, when it’s all added up, we’ll be in the black? How do we cause more good than harm?
Just as the play’s vision of God is nuanced, Ella is, too. “She’s a nuanced character. She has limitless compassion for the people in her life, and for the people she’s treating, but she has tragedy in her past, too. And she blames God for it. How do you provide therapy to someone you resent? Can you still help that person, even if you’re angry with them?”
Even as the sand runs down the hourglass and Ella’s chance to save Creation becomes more and more urgent, she finds herself berating God. If the Jews are really the chosen people, she asks, why were they abandoned to centuries of slavery? Why did they have to wander the desert for forty years? Why were they exiled for two millennia? Is He anything more than an abusive husband?
When casting Ella, he looked for someone capable of representing that nuance: the push and pull between a woman who lives to help and a woman with deep resentments, a woman capable of drawing on deep wells of empathy and well-stocked reserves of fury. He found this in Kate Bode.
It’s not an easy play to perform; it’s wordy, for one thing. And it’s two characters alone in a room. “As a director, I’m always looking for the spectacle. How do I make this visually interesting? It’s a challenge, finding two actors who can carry the emotional weight of the play well enough to make watchable and engaging. That’s a challenge.”
He’s confident that the challenge has been met, in a production that (as Jewish Theater always points out) is not just for Jewish audiences, but for everyone. No one checks to see if you’ve had capicola or Sunday gravy before you watch The Sopranos, and you don’t need to have had your bar or batz mitzvah to see this play. Being human is nondenominational, and so are the questions the play raises.
Oh, My God presents several opportunities: to laugh; to be moved; to experience the work of a renowned Israeli playwright; to enter into a communal space; and to reflect on all the burdens and gifts of being human.
Oh, My God
Jewish Theatre Grand Rapids
340 State St. SE, Grand Rapids
April 17-May 4
jtgr.org
