''God'', subtitled ''A Comedy in One Act'', is a play by

Woody Allen Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...

. It was first published in 1975, along with ''Death'', and Allen's short stories in Woody Allen's book ''

Without Feathers ''Without Feathers'' (1975, ) is one of Woody Allen's best-known books, spending four months on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller List. It is a collection of essays and two one-act plays, ''Death'' and ''God''. Title meaning The title ''Without ...

''. The comedy is modelled after Bertolt Brecht's

epic theatre Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creat ...

, in that the characters frequently point out the artificiality of the play and switch roles. Actors also play various audience members, and

himself appears at one point as a voice on a phone.

Plot

The setting is an

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

amphitheatre An amphitheatre (British English) or amphitheater (American English; both ) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ...

, circa 500BC. Diabetes, an actor, and Hepatitis, a writer, sit on stage lamenting about how Hepatitis' new play lacks a good ending. They begin to frequently break the

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

, interacting with the audience and making note about how they are fictional characters in a play. Hepatitis asks if anyone has a major in philosophy, resulting in an audience member named Doris Levine joining the action on stage, while Diabetes calls the play's author

for advice on how to proceed. Another playwright, Trichinosis, joins the stage, saying that he has a machine that will help give the play a satisfying ending. The machine creates thunder and lightning effects, and allows an actor to descend from the roof in a harness in order to play

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

descending from the heavens to intervene at the conclusion in Hepatitis' play. Doris notes that this is a ''

deus ex machina ''Deus ex machina'' ( , ; plural: ''dei ex machina''; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function ...

'', while Hepatitis begins questioning God's existence. Eventually, another playwright named Lorenzo Miller enters and says that he author of a greater play, and that the real audience is fictional.

Blanche DuBois Blanche DuBois (married name Grey) is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play ''A Streetcar Named Desire''. The character was written for Tallulah Bankhead and made popular to later audiences with Elia Ka ...

enters, saying that she is tired of the brutality of Tennessee Williams' play. Hepatitis finally accepts Trichinosis' machine, and his play begins. The

play-within-a-play A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes c ...

involves Diabetes playing a slave who is forced to courier a message to the king. He is nervous after being told that if the message is bad news, the king will execute him; he opens the message, but is not reassured when it reads only the word "Yes". He eventually reaches the king's castle and realises that "Yes" is an affirmative, and thus fundamentally good. However, the king reveals that the question that the message provides the answer for is: "Is there a God?", which enrages the king as it means that he will go to Hell for his sins. Just as the king is to execute Diabetes' character, Trichinosis' machine malfunctions and strangles the actor playing God. Hepatitis hurriedly tells Diabetes to

ad-lib In music and other performing arts, the phrase (; from Latin for 'at one's pleasure' or 'as you desire'), often shortened to "ad lib" (as an adjective or adverb) or "ad-lib" (as a verb or noun), refers to various forms of improvisation. The r ...

the ending, but several other fictional characters appear and several members of the audience begin to run amok at the breakdown of reality. Eventually, all the other actors leave and Diabetes and Hepatitis sit on stage alone together, repeating their lines from the beginning about the need for a good ending, suggesting that the entire play exists in an infinite loop.

External links

Play Synopsis
{{Woody Allen 1975 plays Comedy plays Plays by Woody Allen