'I Am Own Wife' Opens on Broadway
By Gordon Cox
Gordon Cox is a frequent contributor to Newsday.
December 4, 2003
The eyes still have it. "I Am My Own Wife" may have transferred to a big
Broadway theater, but the one-man show still holds our attention, thanks to the
pair of wide, glittering eyes belonging to the actor Jefferson Mays. As the
German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, Mays surveys his audience with a
gaze that's somehow both shyly retiring and fiercely, irresistibly intense. From
the instant he walks onstage - wearing a simple black frock and a string of
pearls - his gaze has us under its spell.
Mays is reprising, with little visible transfer-strain, a role he already played
to justly great acclaim earlier this spring, when the play had a successful run
Off- Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. His performance as Charlotte, the most
prominent of the many characters he portrays during the show, has an unwavering
strength of focus that manages to broadcast intimacy even in the larger house of
the Lyceum, where this smart, engrossing production opened last night.
It helps, too, that Moisés Kaufman ("Gross Indecency," "The Laramie Project")
has directed the show with a documentarian's investigative eye for detail. "I Am
My Own Wife" doesn't so much fill the space as it does telescope our interest,
picking out and holding forth one intriguing fact after another.
Those facts add up to a rich portrait of Mahlsdorf, the real-life transvestite
who managed to survive the regimes of both the Third Reich and the East German
Communists. Much of the play's material comes from interviews that Mahlsdorf,
the curator of her own museum of antiques, gave to playwright Doug Wright (whose
character also appears in the play), and the stories she tells - about a teenage
boy discovering an affinity for women's clothes, about evading death at the
hands of the Nazis, about her desperate murder of her abusive father - are so
tough, dignified and inspiring that they begin, eventually, to test credulity.
And that, it turns out, is part of the point. In the 1990s, an uncovered Stasi
file revealed that Mahlsdorf may have been a willing informant for East
Germany's repressive secret police, and it cast shadows of doubt over many of
the events Mahlsdorf repeated as the story of her life. Wright has written his
own ambivalence into the play, offering an array of information about Charlotte
without offering answers. We're left, as he is, compelled, fascinated and torn
between admiration and suspicion.
Doug the character is the script's least successful risk, the guy who
unnecessarily articulates his subject matter's troubling questions. But Wright's
impressively economical storytelling has a confident sense of timing that, at
its best, endows the play with the feel of a developing mystery.
Kaufman has given the play an expert, impeccably paced production that never
stumbles. The set, by Derek McLane, conjures both the privacy of a drawing room
and the expansiveness of an antique warehouse, and it is lit with faultless
precision by David Lander. Andre J. Pluess adds gratifyingly subtle sound
enhancement, and costume designer Janice Pytel's outfit for Mays seems so
instantly iconic that the single, temporary costume change is nearly shocking.
It should be said that Mays does great work in his several supporting roles,
which he distinguishes with a versatile voice and a shape-shifting body. But
it's Charlotte, with her gentle gestures and her enigmatic smile, who haunts us.
Mays' performance is so finely honed and perfectly cadenced that, when we
finally hear a recording of the real voice of Mahlsdorf, it's not jarring at
all. The actor's voice may not have exactly the same timbre, and Mays certainly
doesn't look much like Mahlsdorf as she's described. But none of that matters.
He's gotten her essence simply, thrillingly right.
BROADWAY REVIEW
I AM MY OWN WIFE. By Doug Wright, directed by Moisés Kaufman. With Jefferson
Mays. Set by Derek McLane, lights by David Lander, costumes by Janice Pytel,
sound by Andre J. Pluess. Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St. between Sixth and
Seventh avenues. Seen at Monday's preview.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
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