One-person shows have always been very popular in professional theater for one reason'they're cheap. The main reason why we go to the theater is to be there and see a good story. In a one-man show, you are usually just listening to a storyteller. But in the Madison Repertory Theatre's current production of 'I am My Own Wife,' one man (David Adkins) plays 40 different characters; he is not simply telling a story, but becoming one.
The script, which won a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, is the work of one of the 40 characters Adkins plays, Doug Wright. It is written as a series of vignettes about the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transvestite from East Berlin who, in the words of the playwright, 'should not exist.' Starting out as 'a little boy in his mother's housecoat ... [Charlotte] survived stormtroopers ... [and] navigated a path between the two most oppressive regimes the Western world has ever known:' the Nazis and the Soviets.
The recount of Charlotte's survival is set up as a number of interview sessions between her and the playwright. The play starts with Charlotte coming out of a bare black wall in a gray dress, black bonnet, stockings and sturdy black leather shoes. Charlotte shows us the phonograph in the museum she founded, the Gr??nderzeit, and after playing a record melts into a Newsweek correspondent named John with a heavy Texan accent.
John is one of the 40 or so characters that David Adkins brings to life with an incredible amount of razor-sharp energy and believable character switches. These characters help open up the world of this play; it is a world that exists mostly in Charlotte's flashbacks, which she relives for Doug Wright's micro-cassette recorder. She leads us through a pre-war Germany where she discovers she likes wearing women's clothing, and where a loving aunt introdcuces her to a book entitled 'Der Transvestiten.'
Just as she is embracing her sexual identity, the Nazis rise to power and she narrowly manages to escape from prison and army enlistment, instead becoming involved in Berlin's gay cultural circles. The resounding Nazi defeat that World War II brought would lead us to believe that Charlotte's worst days are behind her, except that she is on the Eastern side of the wall.
A communist police state with harsh Stalinist policies is not a great place for anyone, especially not for a transvestite. Charlotte, however, is courageous and takes over the furnishings of a local bar to turn the basement of her house into a sort of nightclub for the LGBT community, darkening her basement's windows so the eyes of the Stasi, the East German secret police, cannot peer in.
Alas, as Charlotte tells us of her miraculous survival in a world stacked against a slightly built, furniture-collecting transvestite, doubts about her veracity are revealed. When the Berlin wall crumbles, Charlotte is hailed as one of Germany's great heroines, but as her star rises, her past becomes patchy. Slowly, it is uncovered that she worked as an informant for the Stasi, allegedly reporting willingly on black-market transactions and several characters in East Berlin's LGBT community.
Doug Wright, the character, constantly calls into question other parts of her story, and we as an audience are left to the horror of uncertainty and doubt. Has this charming, courageous and seemingly incredible woman been lying to us? Or are the contents of her Stasi file trumped up?
These are not questions the play answers, as no one really knows the truth. In the end, though, it is not the truth that is important, but rather the story. And Charlotte has provided us with a great story, one that bleeds the riches of humanity with all its wonders and doubts.
