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| Photo By Sandy Underwood |
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Two-time CEA winner Todd Almond portrays more than 30 characters at ETC.
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Stage lights dim at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC). Upstage in a black-walled, white-floored, brown-furnished set one of a pair of tall white doors eases open. A black-dressed, pearl-necklaced individual slips in, closes the door carefully and moves downstage. Head tilted to one side and speaking tentatively at first, Charlotte (pronounced "sharlotta") Von Mahlsdorf begins discussing antique gramophones. Thus ever so simply, thus ever so softly a truly original, utterly galvanic personality takes up residence in one's consciousness -- never, ever to be forgotten.
Of all the astonishing premieres ETC's Artistic Director, Lynn Meyers, has assembled -- and there have been several -- Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife is perhaps the most astonishing to date. And the most exhilarating. It comes to this regional premiere already decorated with the 2004 Best Drama Tony and the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Meyers' production dazzles the mind, delights the eye and twists the viscera at levels of power like ETC's productions of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, Edward Albee's Three Tall Women and Anne Nelson's The Guys.
To begin there's Wright's lucid, fluid, solo-performer, multi-character script -- exploring the life and times of a quintessential survivor. As a pre-teen boy named Lothar -- and there are no mis-applied pronouns here -- she discovers comfort in female clothing and sanctuary inside a female persona that she developed and maintained fiercely until her death six decades later, having survived in East Berlin the xenophobic, homophobic rage of two successive, oppressive regimes: Nazis and Communists.
Like the real Charlotte, Wright's character collects clocks and gramophones. She turns her 23-room house into a museum of 18th-century furniture. She snatches from Communist bulldozers the entire contents of a 1920s gay nightclub and reconstructs it lovingly in her basement, then welcomes gays, lesbians and trannies to illegal Sunday afternoon dances.
Perhaps Charlotte -- both in life and in Wife -- cooperated with the Nazis in exchange for her life. Perhaps she leaked the names of black-marketeers to the Communist secret police. Perhaps she invented some of the things she said she did and some of the things journalists wrote as she turned herself into East Berlin's most famous transvestite. There's little or no hard evidence.
Perhaps she lied or perhaps it's all true -- and she simply did what she had to do. Wright, who wrote himself in as a character into the play, says, "I need to believe that Lothar Berfelde navigated a path between the two most repressive regimes that the Western World has ever known -- in a pair of high heels. I need to believe that things like that are true. That they can happen in the world."
Under discussion, the manner of Wright's script may sound cumbersome. The single actor, alone onstage for just a shade under two hours, must limn out Charlotte and 35 other characters -- some major, some with no more than a line or two. It is to the credit of Wright's writing, Meyers' impeccably simple, imperatively precise, energized but never brisk staging and pacing, and above all to Todd Almond's exemplary character building that Charlotte's 40-year narrative remains crystalline and compelling.
Almond, best remembered from two CEA-winning performances at ETC in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, maintains the order and clarity of the storytelling while slipping with no visible effort from distinct character to distinct character, always in the same black dress, apron, kerchief and pearls. He delineated Charlotte fully, giving her layer under layer of motivation and response. He fleshes out Wright and his friend, John Marks, to some degree and identifies the 30-plus others with an identifying posture, gesture or tone. It's a tour de force in bravura acting, as unforgettable as Charlotte herself.
Resident designer Brian c. Mehring's set is superlative and while the thousand changes of his lighting plot are dramatic, they are also just a bit fussy and self-concerned.
As I said above: It's an unforgettable experience. Grade: A+
I AM MY OWN WIFE, presented by Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, continues until March 20.
