Thursday, December 04, 2003

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS
Star-Ledger Staff

NEW YORK -- The life and perilous times of an East German cross-dresser who outlasted the Nazi and Communist regimes, "I Am My Own Wife" is a fascinating saga.

Opening yesterday at the Lyceum following a sold-out success at Playwrights Horizons, the one-person drama is galvanized by Jefferson Mays' remarkable performance.

Not only does Mays portray the deceptively demure Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in believable detail, he summons up nearly 40 other people in this unusual real-life story.

Expect no Lola-Lola sort of girlie transvestite; 65-year-old Charlotte is nun-like in severe black skirts, orthopedic shoes and a modest strand of pearls. Anticipate no I-am-a-camera-type accounts of divine decadence; Charlotte pursues 1890s bric-a-brac more avidly than sex.

In fact, Charlotte single-mindedly creates a private Berlin museum crammed with ornate furniture, gramophones and objects dating from the Kaiser Wilhelm II era. The basement even houses the fixtures of a notorious Weimar bar that Charlotte salvaged from the wreckers.

"As a mother would take an orphan child, yes?," Charlotte explains her acquisitions.

Playwright Doug Wright ("Quills") fluently dramatizes how he encountered Charlotte in the early 1990s and decided to make a play about her. Yet the deeper that Wright digs into Charlotte's history, the more he perceives that her enthralling story does not correspond with facts from other sources.

Charlotte may or may not have killed her brutal father. She may or may not have been an informer for the Communists. She may or may not have betrayed a lover to the authorities to grab his collection of clocks and vintage recordings.

Among the play's arresting qualities is a dawning realization that this trannie-granny who at first appears so self-effacing and even noble may possibly be an exploiter of other peoples' misery. As the play progresses, the formerly revered Charlotte becomes so controversial that she flees Berlin and Wright despairs of depicting her sympathetically.

The result is a striking work of many subtle layers that never ceases to captivate.

Mays dexterously impersonates two-score characters through instantaneous changes in posture and voice. Above all, Mays' Charlotte is a prim charmer with an inscrutable little smile and a Lorelei-like way with a yarn.

Director Moisés Kaufman, author-director of "Gross Indecency" and "The Laramie Project," judiciously paces Mays' performance and supports him with an exceptional production. Emulating Charlotte's character, designer Derek McLane's setting initially looks simple but then opens up to reveal room upon room stuffed to the rafters with furnishings of bygone times. David Lander's exquisite lighting unerringly modulates with the drama's flow.

Altogether a triumph of perceptive writing, acting and staging, "I Am My Own Wife" is an offbeat saga that proves once again that the truth is a river of conflicting currents.