I AM MY OWN WIFE
This past weekend I finally managed to get to the Lyceum theater in NYC to see Doug Wright‘s (Quills) I Am My Own Wife, in which Jefferson Mays (left) gives a tour de force performance re-enacting scenes from the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde in 1928), who managed to survive both the Nazis and the East German secret police while living openly as a transvestite and tenaciously amassing a huge collection of turn-of-the century furniture and other household relics in a “museum” in the basement of her Eastern-bloc home.
“The various perspectives on Charlotte’s life are all enacted by Mr. Mays in a simply splendid, genuinely artful performance,” wrote Bruce Weber in his review of the production for the New York Times this past winter. “The characters include a television talk show host, more than a few brutal authoritarians, several of Charlotte’s family members and friends, as well as Mr. Wright, the playwright himself. The total number of characters is 35, each with a separate voice and many with differing accents. Mr. Mays is able to render quite remarkably an American newsman whose German is inflected with a Texas drawl, but no less remarkable is that he consistently switches roles not only with vivid persuasion but also with uncannily precise timing.”
Directed by Moises Kaufman (Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The Laramie Project), with exquisite lighting by David Lander and sound design by Andre J. Pleuss, I Am My Own Wife was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and more recently the Outer Critics Circle Award for best play.
Those of you unable to make it to New York to catch the Broadway production of I Am My Own Wife should check out Rosa von Praunheim’s 1992 docudrama I Am My Own Woman (based on Charlotte von Mahlsdorf’s autobiographical book, I Am My Own Woman: The Outlaw Life of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf, Berlin’s Most Distinguished Transvestite), which features von Mahlsdorf herself (pictured, far right, with Jens Taschner, who plays Charlotte from 15-17, and Ichgola Androgyn, who plays her from 20-30) in a featured role.
As Randy Turoff writes in a PlanetOut review: “What’s most interesting about von Praunheim’s film treatment of Charlotte is the absolute equivalence given to her achievements as a longtime sexual pervert, Nazi resister, gay liberator, and conservative-looking housekeeper with a genius for restoring palaces, manors, and antique mass-produced Victoriana. Charlotte is not a simple character: she’s complex and colorful, with a repertoire of bawdy stories and gruesome World War II recollections; at the same time she is a historical gay figure who’s made a huge difference simply by following her own queer proclivities with boundless bravery and enthusiasm.”
