A father and mother lean over the bed of their sleeping child. The idyllic picture is usurped by horror and cruelty, as the family are transformed into refugees in a world of suffering, humiliation, hope and despair. Having lost her husband and her honour, the mother ends up leaving her dead child with all the other dead children to await the Messiah, who, when he finally arrives, turns out to be an old street peddler with nothing to offer but Swiss watches and unavailing compassion.

This is one of Hanoch Levin's greatest and most despairing works.

This play traces the fate of a mother and child, reflecting our own century in all the terrifying, inhumane and absurd events that pour onto the stage.

The style - direct, cruel yet highly poetic - with its pared down sentences that arrange words in a sort of long psalm, gives the play truly universal appeal, within which each line strikes a personal chord in each and every one of us.