True lies.I Am My Own Wife I Am My Own Wife is a play by Doug Wright which examines the life of German individual Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde, who killed his father when he was a young boy and survived the Nazi and Communist regimes in East Berlin as a transvestite. * Written by Doug Wright
Doug Wright is an award-winning American playwright, librettist, and screenplay writer. * Directed by Moises Kaufman * Starring Jefferson Mays * Lyceum Lyceum, gymnasium near ancient Athens Lyceum (līsē`əm), gymnasium near ancient Athens. There Aristotle taught; hence the extension of the term lyceum to Aristotle's school of philosophers, the Peripatetics. Theater, New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. (open run) Anyone who cares about theater will want to see I Am My Own Wife, which has just opened on Broadway after three years of development (including a production at Chicago's gay theater company, About Face) and multiple sold-out runs last summer off-Broadway. The show is an exquisite collaboration among playwright Doug Wright (Quills), director Moises Kaufman (The Laramie Project fame), and the remarkable Jefferson Mays as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (March 18, 1928 - April 30, 2002) was the founder of the Gründerzeit Museum (a museum of every-day items) in Berlin-Mahlsdorf. Early life . A gay East Berlin transvestite trans·ves·tite n. One who practices transvestism. transvestite Sexology A person with a compulsion to dress as a member of the other sex, which may be essential to maintaining an erection and achieving orgasm. See Transsexual. who survived both the Nazis and the Communist regime, Charlotte ran a museum of antique furniture until her death in 2002. In Wife, Mays plays not only Charlotte but other characters including the lesbian aunt who mentored her and the Nazi father whom she says she murdered, not to mention Wright, who first met her in 1993 and over time developed a serious case of hero worship. When he learns that Charlotte was an informant to East Germany's secret police, Wright finds himself questioning all he thought he knew and admired about Charlotte's survival instinct. The central point of the play involves the unreliability of recorded history. Competing narratives emerge, but we're left feeling that the truth is more than what we know. The script, Kaufman's impeccable staging, and Mays's spectacular performance combine to create and sustain that mystery. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion