I Am My Own Wife (Old Fitzroy) – theatre review

I Am My Own Wife by American Doug Wright won the Pulitzer prize in 2004. It concerns the writing of this play about a famous German transvestite, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who lived in Berlin through the Nazi and Communist regimes. It was directed by Moises Kaufman for his Tectonic Theatre Project, which has developed other biographical material as drama, such as: Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1997) and famously The Laramie Project (2000). The New York productions of I Am My Own Wife, off-Broadway and on-Broadway, starred Jefferson Mays, for which he won a Tony Award. Mr Mays played in a production of the play at the Sydney Opera House in 2006. Apparently, it was this performance that inspired Ben Gerrard, as a young acting student to put it into his list of plays to do.

The play is a solo work. Over the course of the play (90 minutes, with an interval), Mr Gerrard will play a multitude of characters, principally, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and the author Doug Wright, during their interviews for the preparation of the script. The play develops into a moral conundrum for the author as he has a version of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf’s life from herself on tape, but is confronted with some other publicly recorded facts that seem to contradict them.

The role requires much virtuosity of the actor (some 35 characters?) Mr Gerrard is extraordinarily accurate with all of its transformations, vocally and physically, and is positively fearless as he talks directly to the audience, often, as much as if he is possessed by the fearless nature of the central character of the work. Fearlessness a common identifying trait? The technical control is astonishing but I felt sometimes at the expense of permitting the audience to be confronted, to be able to empathise or not, with the character and the story. The experience, for me, resulted in admiration, but I was not touched or moved. It was cool and had a kind of ‘missionary’ zeal about its intentions, and in the contrast to a recent similar moral dilemma presented at the Old Fitz, earlier in the year, with Gail Louw’s play, Blonde Poison and the ambiguous motives of Stella Goldschag in repressive times, oddly, much less disconcerting. Mr Gerrard did not find moments to ‘reveal’ the inner contradictions of his character to allow us sufficient opportunity to endow our feelings, our judgements, our vulnerabilities for Charlotte or her situations.

The production is immaculate. The set design by Caroline Commo is beautiful in its forensic clarity of detail and ‘tricks’, the Lighting by Hugh Hamilton atmospheric, with a Sound Design by Nate Edmondson of restrained aptness. Director, Shaun Rennie, has created a very tight and lucid production lacking, in its brisk efficiency, an emotional centre to the conflicts to be found.

Mr Wright’s play becomes just a little to formulaic in its structures and idiosyncrasies of style, a very familiar technique developed by Moises Kaufman (the original director) in his work, and does not really stand up as a great Pulitzer Prize winner alongside many other winners of this coveted award. Mr Wright has written, co-incidently, another play been presented in Sydney at the moment: Grey Gardens, a musical presented by Squabbalogic, at the Seymour Centre.

I Am My Own Wife at the Old Fitz is a production of theatrical bravura. Go, and judge for yourself. Who is Charlotte von Mahlsdorf? and even more intriguingly, who and what is Mr Wright in his ambitions?

Company: Oriel Group in association with Red Line Productions
Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre, Cathedral St, Wooloomooloo
Dates: 17 November – 5 December 2015

Kevin Jackson
For more of Kevin Jackson’s theatre reviews, check out his blog at Kevin Jackson’s Theatre Diary