Putting Norman Issa in God's shoes is a statement. It's a pity it's missed
About 20 years after it was written, "Oh God", Anat Gov's beloved play, returns to the Habima stage, bringing together a psychologist who has lost her faith and God, who comes to her for therapy. The production, led by Norman Issa and Yael Levental, provides an hour and a half of funny, human, and sometimes moving moments, but the banal direction, unnecessary effects, and lack of a new interpretation keep it in the comfort zone.
In a small room, behind a glass door, surrounded by a variety of books and drawings made by her son, sits Ella — named after the tree, not in the sense of Goddess — waiting for her next patient. It is a new patient, who asked to meet her urgently and arrives in the room dressed in a kind of white robe. At first, he identifies himself only as 'A', but it soon becomes clear that he is a particularly strange character, endowed with special powers and knowing things that no human should know. This patient is God.
"Oh God", written by the late playwright Anat Gov about 20 years ago, became one of the most beloved Israeli plays thanks to a combination of lightness, humanity, humor, and dealing with real philosophical questions — all within an hour and a half. Now it returns to the Habima stage starring Yael Levental (in the version we watched) and Riki Blich, who play Ella alternately, Norman Issa in the role of God, and Yoav Rosenberg, who plays Lior, Ella's autistic son, with great grace.
These big questions are already embedded in the starting point of the play: what happens when God himself sits on the psychologist's couch, and the one who is supposed to provide answers to all the questions of existence comes precisely to ask for help? The meeting between the two quickly turns into a battle of wits, in which Ella is required not only to diagnose her all-powerful patient and prevent him from destroying the world because he is depressed, but also to confront him about the universe he created, about the suffering he allows, and about the faith she herself claims to have lost long ago.
Even 20 years later, Gov's text works excellently. The audience still roars when Ella announces that it is impossible to conduct therapy with a patient who has no parents, because who exactly can everything be blamed on, and gets angry with her when the two discuss the way woman was created. The dialogue between them is conducted like a ping-pong game, and the play relies heavily on its score — that is, on the rhythmic and musical structure of the text. The actors hold this rhythm well and manage to amuse and touch the heart without the transitions between them feeling forced.
The emotion of the play stems not only from the great discussion between man and his Creator, but also from Ella's personal story. This is a woman whose fate has not been kind, and her anger at God is not a philosophical exercise, but a personal, painful, and justified account. It is precisely the connection between the big questions and her small life that gives the play its most melancholic moments and makes her much more than someone who was sent to fix God. Thanks to her, and despite all the reservations, it is a cute, funny, and sometimes moving play.
In days when everything around feels chaotic and illogical, the thought behind the decision to stage the play again is clear — after all, who among us wouldn't want to catch God for a session and demand a few answers from him. However, truly good theater should leave us speechless not only thanks to the text, but also thanks to what the direction manages to do with it. Director Matan Deri-Dash presented a relatively banal therapy, and if this were the first production of the play, perhaps the choice to clear the stage for Gov's witty writing would have been enough. But in a new production of a known work, one could have hoped for an interpretation or a statement that would illuminate it from a different angle.
Sometimes the direction even interferes with the text doing its job. The effects that are supposed to demonstrate God's powers — an apple floating to his hand or books falling when he is angry — look cheap and, mainly, unnecessary. Also, the musical transitions, intended to clarify that time has passed, interrupt the beautiful rhythm of the text instead of serving it. This is especially a pity because the rest of the time the director manages to create beautiful and dynamic movement in a small room, when most of the play relies on only two actors.
And not all the problems lie in the direction: the answers that the play provides to its big questions also tend towards kitsch at times. After an hour and a half of dealing with faith, suffering, responsibility, and the meaning of life, it reaches human and comforting, but also quite predictable conclusions. And yet, the direction had an opportunity to give the play exactly the new statement it lacks when choosing to touch on a beloved but also very familiar material to the audience — through the casting of Issa. In the Israel of 2026, where there are still those who will raise an eyebrow at a God who speaks with an Arabic accent, this is a choice charged with meaning even before a single word is said in the play. It is possible that this was indeed the intention, but five minutes after the start of the play, one already forgets about it — and the potential is simply missed. What a whole world could have opened up here if, in one of the times when one of the characters says "Oh God", they had said "Oh Allah" instead. A small change that would have given the production a layer of courage and topicality. Even without it, it is a play that is pleasant to watch — it's just a pity that the production settles for what was already in the play, instead of discovering what else can be found in it.
