UD's 'I Am My Own Wife' is fascinating
By Tom Butler
Delaware Online
Special to the NewsJournal
September 19, 2009
Michael Gotch spins a strange and challenging tale in his one-man show recounting the life of a transvestite who survived in Nazi Germany and Communist East Germany.
The real wonder of the show is how real and distinct the actor makes the 30 or so characters he portrays and how he sustains real dialogue between the characters when he forms the entire cast.
"I Am My Own Wife" by Doug Wright won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. The current production by the University of Delaware Resident Ensemble players benefits greatly from a brilliantly devised set by Brian Sidney Bembridge and excellent sound and lighting.
The fine production values enhance Gotch's performance and make the tiny Studio Theatre seem expansive.
German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's story is strange and her ability to separate what she believes from what actually happens makes the exploration all the more intriguing. The real Charlotte won a national medal for preserving German culture during times of great repression.
She also was revealed as a spy for the hated Stasi, the East German Secret Police whose investigations permeated much of the life of the country during the Cold War. Gotch manages to make Charlotte a vivid and distinct individual using very few external tools. The character is well into her 60s when the audience meets her and the young, angular Gotch creates her personality by adopting a placid half-smile and slightly stiff set of the shoulders and arms.
He is wearing a black dress, tights and a tight-fitting black head wrap, even a sting of pearls but the costume is just to establish a frame. It's Charlotte's peculiar German-accented English and lengthy passages in German that define her being.
The author was ambivalent about how he wanted to feel toward this peculiar and enigmatic figure. The author creates a character called Doug Wright and the audience listens as he struggles to know Charlotte, then unravel her life story and try to turn it into art.
Listening to Gotch hold long dialogues in completely different voices and with distinct mannerisms is fascinating. The creative conflict between author and subject, between truth and hoped-for truth makes engaging theatre. A listener can forget that Gotch is alone on stage.
The evocation of distinct voices sustained over two hours takes great craft. When Gotch introduces Alfred, a friend Charlotte betrayed to the Stasi, a new series of equally distinct dialogue emerges.
Gotch's ability to keep this many voices and figures alive and interacting never wavers. As more and more characters flash across the stage, moments of comedy, pathos and concern flesh out the central question of the reality behind Charlotte's collection of gramophones, records and the trove of clocks and highboys in her private museum.
Charlotte rarely loses that placid almost archaic smile. It is hard to find the substance beneath the polish but this play makes the effort worthwhile.
Director John Langs presents a fascinating view of some of the stranger dimensions of modern history and the varying notions of fame and prestige in that history on a very personal level.
"I Am My Own Wife" works as a fully realized piece of theater.