I Am My Own Wife

June 26th, 2005
Geffen Playhouse @The Brentwood Theatre
Play, we went with Troy

Gay Transvestite in War Time Berlin Miraculously Survives Nazi Germany & The Communist Stazi Against All Odds. The story is fascinating. It won the Tony & Pulitzer prize for a reason (and just about every other award). And there are equally good reasons Jefferson Mays won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. It's a stellar performance with an array of diverse characters... all blossoming out of one man.


Jefferson Mays plays Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf (and also the actual playwright, Doug Wright, and 35 other characters), and takes the rapt audience through the entire story. This is not "drag theatre" or a comic send-up. This is theatre that portrays the encapsulated reality of this small gay man, whose love of music and antiques sees him through an abusive homicidal father, the charges brought against him for murdering his father (to protect himself & his mother), the raining bombs of the allies, the Nazi regime, the Communist Stazi, and even the more recent Skinhead Neo-Nazi insurgence.


Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf (aka Lothar Berfelde) died in 2002, in his 70's. But he survived it all. Including death, in my opinion. Sixty years after the Nazi ordeal, I found this man's love of music to be a small bridge of relatability, and the tiniest point of commonality. Music was definitely the life raft of my adolescence. That it could buoy the spirits of someone surviving the Nazi ordeal is amazing. And I wish I could talk about the amazing photograph at the end of the play.... the one that summed up this man's entire amazing survival, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone going to see it.


Once again, the Geffen Playhouse delivers powerful theatre straight from Broadway to our doorsteps here in Los Angeles.