Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✭✩✩
by Doug Wright, directed by Robin Phillips
CanStage and the National Arts Centre, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
February 9-March 4, 2006
The subject of I Am My Own Wife is East German transvestite and antiques collector Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde), who survived both the Nazi and the Communist regimes. She turned her house into a museum and was honoured for her efforts. She was also an informant for the East German secret police. The subject is fascinating. The play is not.
The main problem is that author Doug Wright has made his difficulties writing about Charlotte part of the story. The tactic is both self-aggrandizing and uninteresting. Besides, director Robin Phillips, famous though he is, seems to have missed a major aspect of the play. What fascinated critics of the New York production and Wright himself (as per his program note) was that it was impossible to tell whether Charlotte’s account of her past was actually true. Lothar invented his identity as Charlotte, but was that all?
Phillips races through these questions that end the play as if to whitewash the character. He directs Stephen Ouimette as Charlotte never once to suggest that Charlotte tells anything but the truth. She seems merely a kindly, rather eccentric spinster with an iffy command of German. Except for Wright and Charlotte’s friend Alfred, Ouimette plays the 30 plus other parts as caricatures. Ultimately, the real enigma that Charlotte embodies eludes both actor and director.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-02-16.
Photo: Stephen Ouimette as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. ©Shin Sugino.
2006-02-16
I Am My Own Wife