It does sound too good to be true: a man, dressed in a drab black dress, stockings and heels. He's intelligent, charming and a national hero who lived through two of the world's most oppressive regimes (the Nazis and the Communists) and somehow, by some clearly divine force of inspiration, lived to tell about it. It is something of a modern fairy tale, to be exact.
We are meant to be unsure, as in the moment in the Madison Repertory's production of Doug Wright's "I Am My Own Wife" when the audience, the set and the stage are covered by total darkness. We have followed Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an East German transvestite and the play's centerpiece, into the basement of her Gunderzeit Museum where, she says, she has something she wants to show us. When she disappears backstage, through one of the large, black vertical slats that make for exits, entrances and a general backdrop in the first act, the lights are suddenly killed and, for but a few anomalous seconds, we are left in silence. The man behind me coughed and I think his date took the opportunity to check her cell phone. You could feel the crossings of legs and nervous side glances.
But we are quickly relieved from the prospect of self-examination by the self-deprecating, purposefully childish voice of the playwright, having written himself into the play, emanating Oz-like from the corners of the ceiling with the pseudo-confessional tone of someone very scared and eager to tell us about it. Audience members might feel like they are living a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure but with the perverse revelation that the risk was being sold to them. They are meant to feel like they had been brave, not merely seeking entertainment, in choosing the dark stairwell on page 94 and not the open pasture on page 74, which would surely end the story.
It is not that the museum basement gay cabaret that the overhead voice is describing to us is unworthy of fascination (or a play for that matter). As he recounts the awesome details, which feel much like they are being read from a notepad the playwright brought with him upon visiting the actual site, we do in fact conjure up the image of "the most secret place in Berlin." But the scene retains the comfort of a campfire. The playwright knows he has a good story — it is "way up his alley" — and, if anything, it is his genuineness that reveals itself through the perfectly constructed narrative.
And yet, this production of his play refuses to let anything but the big, prefabricated messages seep through the cracks in its façade. The intended thrill of the story is clear: In this living, breathing and smiling paradox lays the greatest testament to the individual soul a person, or a playwright, could ask for. Charlotte "should not have survived" — but she did. When the playwright describes his incredible "need to believe" that a person like Charlotte can exist, it is meant to be an acknowledgment of his, and what should be audience members,' irrational insistence in Charlotte's character and being.
As the actor David Adkins has it, though, playing Charlotte and the playwright, among forty other characters, the line sounds needlessly, almost embarrassingly, obvious. Adkins is more than estimable; he is clearly a talented actor. It is impossible not to marvel at his ability to assume so many personalities, inflections and manners of posture as he glides, scurries and prances across stage. With a single shift of his feet, with an arch of his back or the raising of an eyebrow, he becomes Charlotte's father, an American soldier or a trembling, wide-eyed little boy.
But it is a performance calculated to a tee and that is its downfall. Adkins does not stop once to breathe; accordingly, neither do we. At every point in time, it seems, we are watching him in a pose that could easily be admired separate from the play; strung together, what should feel like a dizzying display of blurred identities and timeless, intangible truths instead feels like a series of impersonations and experimental tableaus. As the spotlight followed Adkins about the stage, gently shifting to indicate mood and setting, I unwittingly found myself looking to the spots on stage left in darkness, hoping there might be something there I wasn't supposed to see.
Toward the beginning of the story, as she recalls her childhood, Charlotte tells of her personal collection of keys. When she was a little boy, she collected every sort of key she could get her hands on, storing them with an inexplicable fetish in the pocket of the girl's apron she would be wearing. When she is locked in a room by her Nazi father, she panics, cries and pounds on the door, only to realize that salvation is literally upon her: By then, she has a key for everything. She escapes and becomes Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. Later, when things are meant to have taken their serious, inevitable turn, the tragic irony of Charlotte's quirkiness creeps up on audience members. But in the moment she mentions the remembered keys (and I nearly thought I imagined it) the jingling of keys chimed in from above where, in a hidden booth, a crewmember had pressed an electronic button. The effect felt like nothing else but Pavlov's bells reminding viewers to stay focused on the pretty monster.
Many of the characters that aren't Charlotte are represented by unfortunate stereotypes: the Russian and the German solider sound identical in their ominous imposition; the Americans, like surfers; the playwright, like a member of the cast from "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy."
The story of "I Am My Own Wife" is one that ought to be told, if only for the infectious personality of its protagonist that, despite this show's conservatism, surely revealed itself. But the show is acutely aware of its calling; it knows its audience and why it's there. By now, after a few Tonys, a Pulitzer and assorted other awards, most everyone who goes to see the play will bring with them their biases and an expectation to be pleased. To be redeemed. To find themselves. This production and audience members alike seem reluctant to listen long enough to hear themselves breathing.
Rating: 3 out of 5
