“This show is edgy. It’s gripping. It’s also surprisingly funny.”

That is how University of Saskatchewan alum Heather Morrison describes the Canadian play East of Berlin, which she stars in. The play runs at the Refinery on Dufferin Ave. starting Feb. 3.

Put on by Live Five and written by the young playwright Hannah Moscovitch, East of Berlin is the story of a young man, Rudi, who discovers his businessman father was an SS doctor in the Nazi death camps and his subsequent attempt to reconcile himself with his inherited past.

The show consists of a compact cast of three: Heather Morrison, James Aaron and Chris Hapke. All three actors attended the U of S drama department, along with their director Brian Cochrane, set and lighting designer Byron Hnatuk and stage manager Liz King.

Morrison plays Sarah, a Jewish woman from New York who travels to Berlin hoping to learn more about her mother’s past. When Rudi meets Sarah, his plans for resolving his past are challenged by this new relationship. In a recent CBC interview, Moscovitch said that the play was inspired by real-life stories and some books on families of Nazi war criminals, specifically Born Guilty by Peter Sichrovsky and Legacy of Silence Dan Bar-Oh.

These real-life influences bring grit and truth to the story, and make Rudi’s story relatable.

Morrison believes the play “is great for students, especially because at its core it’s about being haunted by your parents. There’s that adage that we all turn into our parents, but what if your parent is a Nazi war criminal?”

While the latter may be an extreme case of the fears an average young adult may face, the underlying sentiment is relevant. The play also confronts a commonality not only felt by young adults, but people of all ages, “the feeling that if anyone truly got to know you, they wouldn’t like you.”

“These characters spend so much time and energy covering up their pasts that when they do come to the surface, it’s explosive,” Morrison said.

Morrison hopes that the play will pose some difficult, thought-provoking questions to the audience, giving people something to ponder on the way home.

While we may not have a past that matches that of Rudi’s, as citizens of the modern world we can appreciate the idea that our own history continues to play a part in our future, and unless we come to terms with where we came from, we’ll have no control over where we are going.

“East of Berlin is a drama, but there is humor,” Morrison said. “This isn’t a play about being bogged down by the past; it’s a play about escaping it. And that makes it thrilling.”

[box type=”info”]East of Berlin plays at 7 p.m. at the Refinery from Feb. 3-5 and Feb. 9-12. Tickets for the Feb. 5 performance are two-for-one for students.[/box]

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Photo: Brad Proudlove