Jordan Wright
December 20, 2018
Kimberly Schraf (left) and Mitchell Hebert (right) – Photo credit Stan Barouh
When God arrives to your office dressed as Orson Welles, you had better take him seriously. In Anat Gov’s comedic tale God takes on the persona of a distressed patient seeking advice from Ella, a Jewish psychologist with an autistic son, Lior. Ella has only 60 minutes to set God straight before he destroys the world and she’s already fed up with his overactive ego. As part of the company’s 18th annual Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival, this is the first comedy Artistic Director Ari Roth has produced and it’s sharp, witty and searingly funny.
Ella finds God at his wit’s end with humankind, wishing he’d stopped creating the heaven and earth on the fifth day before Adam and Eve’s apple mishap which started all the earthly miseries. I was grateful that some of my rudimentary religious training stuck since the questions Ella poses to God are plucked straight from the chapters of the bible.
Mitchell Hebert (left) and Kimberly Schraf (right) – Photo credit Stan Barouh
Ella, suspicious that God would come to her with his problems, tries to put him off, “I’m non-secular. I eat shrimp wrapped in bacon.” When he persists in his claim to be the all-powerful, she reminds him, “You didn’t have a mother, so who can we blame for everything you’ve done?”
Their back-and-forth banter is clever and incisive. What would God really say? How would he explain why he did such terrible things? Why did he turn his back on Job? She suggests he has been looking for love even though he gets it more than anyone else. And when she brings up the first commandment. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”, she claims that it came from his fear of abandonment.
(l to r) Sean McCoy, Kimberly Schraf, and Mitchel Hebert ~ Photo credit Stan Barouh
Ella is a tough inquisitor posing questions that have gone unexplained for millennia. We are just as curious as she is to hear his answers, but he bobs and weaves around the truth causing Ella to diagnose him as abusive and infantile. By the time they come to some sort of détente – when God accepts his diagnosis and Ella returns to her faith – we have melted into pools of laughter.
(l to r) Sean MCoy and Kimberly Schraf – Photo credit Stan Barouh
Recommended for those that are searching for God sunny side up. A seasoned cast captures the funny bone from the get-go.
With Kimberly Schraf as Ella, Mitchell Hébert as God and Cameron Sean McCoy as Lior.
Translated from the Hebrew by Anthony Berris and Margalit Rodgers and directed by Michael Bloom with set design by Jonathan Dahm Robertson and lighting design by Brittany Shemuga.
Through January 13th at the Atlas Center for the Performing Arts – 1333 H Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002. For tickets info on post show discussions, special rates and discounts visit www.MosaicTheater.org or call the box office at 202.399.7993 ext. 2. Valet parking at 1360 H Street, NE.