Lorinne Vozoff's

The Assassination of Heinrich Reinebach

Review

M.C. Gardner

The Assassination of Heinrich Reinebach is a new one act play written and directed by Lorinne Vozoff and presented by Theatre Group Studio at 2635 South Robertson, Los Angeles, CA.

Ms. Voszoff is a gifted protagonist who does a splendid job acting the singing role of the cabaret chanteuse, Lily. The setup is as familiar as the Café American with Vozoff doing duty as a Piafian Elsa to Emanuele Secci’s amalgamation of Bogart’s Rick and Dooley Wilson’s Sam.  Secci is, however, prepared to stick his or Vozoff’s neck out for somebody (thing)—in this case, the Dutch resistance.

It is Lily’s last night in Amsterdam. She is offered the opportunity to flee unencumbered to Shanghai or to exacerbate her flight to freedom by assisting in an assassination plot unfolding before her. Heinrich Reinebach, a high ranking Nazi, has chosen to visit her cabaret. Heinrich is a nasty drunk whom the protagonists succeed in making drunker. No cognac is too rare for an antagonist being primed for the last call of the evening.

All this is straight forward enough but Vozoff has fashioned something more compelling than the limitations of her two character drama. Her most interior moments come as she stares into and through a mirror in her dressing room. This is a marvelous piece of stage craft.  It becomes clear that we are sharing her reflection as the framing of the mirror faces outward to us—here, her brief recollections of mother, father, childhood, hope and disappointment become, heartbreakingly, our own.

This theme is further enlarged to include the ostensible villain of the piece, Heinrich Reinebach. He is heard on the sound track and addressed as if he were in the audience among us. The recorded menace of his voice allows us to share the reflection of the man she plots to murder. Vozoff’s addresses Reinebach on the existential plain that the audience occupies with him. He is in the audience with us—his vulnerability and his guilt is our own. The mirror motif is explicit—humanity is both executioner and executed and the ground of either is as morally ambiguous as the right to left reversal witnessed in the silvery shimmer of a looking glass.

With the exception of Chopin’s Fantasy Impromptu (and a German ditty that Heinrich requests) the music is comprised of six Kurt Weill songs, preformed live by Secci and Vozoff.  Secci studied at the Vienna Music Academy.  The Academy served him well--his keyboard artistry is one of the highlights of the evening.  His gifts as musician are nicely complimented by his intensity as an actor. The music guides us through the drama.  Each song is a telling (sometimes chilling) commentary on the action as it proceeds.

Our smaller theatres are a resource little acknowledged. Both actors are method actors. Vozoff’s excellence has ties to the world famous Group Theatre of New York. She was coached by founder Harold Clurman and continued her training with Jack Garfein.  Garfein was a surviving teenage-inmate of Auschwitz. Sometimes the distance between theatre and fact is sadly minimal. Those seeking sustenance outside the multiplex will do little better than scheduling a Saturday evening visit to the Theatre Group Studio before performances of the play conclude on Saturday, August 2, 2008