Review: ‘East of Berlin’ at NoHo Arts Center

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As skeletons in the family closet go, the discovery that one’s father was a fugitive war criminal would tend to rank pretty high on the trauma scale. Such is the unpleasant revelation facing Rudi, the tortured narrator of Toronto-based playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s ‘East of Berlin’ at NoHo Arts Center.

A meditation on the generational legacy of the Holocaust told primarily in well-scripted monologue, the journey of Rudi (austere, enigmatic Russell Sams) begins in 1969 Paraguay, amid the community of German expatriates in which he’s grown up shrouded in willful ignorance. At 17, Rudi’s innocence is shattered by brainy homosexual schoolmate Hermann (James Barry, suitably smarmy but looking distractingly preppy for a supposed devotee of American Beat poets). Hermann reveals that Rudi’s father, while serving in the Nazi SS, conducted medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. In a downward spiral of self-loathing, Rudi succumbs to Hermann’s advances just to bring shame on his family. After fleeing to Germany to assume a new identity and medical career, Rudi seeks redemption in the arms of Sarah (Carolyn Stotes), a Jewish student from America who shares his obsession with the Holocaust.

Inability to erase the sins of the past leads Rudi to a particularly disturbing homecoming. The admittedly contrived story aims for emotional inevitability rather than literal credibility, and the handsome co-staging by CB Brown and Sara Botsford is most compelling in the impassioned scenes between Rudi and Sarah.

But does he love Sarah the person or merely the symbol of atonement she represents? Sams’ deliberate deadpan delivery ignores the openings afforded by Rudi’s broken syntax and trailing, incomplete sentences. His lack of affect may be a valid choice -- numbness is an understandable and even chilling response to horrific self-knowledge -- but dramatically, it leaves us nowhere to go.

-- Philip Brandes

‘East of Berlin,’ NoHo Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 19. $25. (818) 508-7101, ext. 7. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Caption: James Barry and Russell Sams in ‘East of Berlin.’ Credit: Chris Brown