I am My Own Wife opens at the Lyceum


I am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright gets a very strong review


The Broadway season adds yet another strong review to its recent slate. Right after running an article on how this season has been troubled , Anna in the Tropics and Henry IV got a great review, then Wonderful Town got a great review, and today the NY Times added one more to the list - I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright, perhaps most famous up to now as the author of Quills.
Bruce Weber wrote this:
[Charlotte von Mahldorf's] harrowing tales of survival through the eras of the Gestapo and the Stasi, the East German secret police, are nothing short of breathtaking. Ah, but are they credible? That becomes an issue in the play, which very subtly but in the end quite powerfully makes a case for the necessity of storytelling in our lives. Among the resonant assertions of "I Am My Own Wife" is that lives themselves are narratives, and that the perspective, sympathy and reliability of the narrator are crucial to our understanding of them. In other words, to endure the world, people may lie about themselves or to themselves, and the lies are as important as the truth.

This play is performed by one actor - Jefferson Mays - who performs all of the roles.

Quite aside from the technical aspects of his performance, Mr. Mays is thoroughly mesmerizing when he is inhabiting his main persona, who is, of course, Charlotte herself. He presents to us a character of steely pride and ferocious wariness, someone whose manner is so self-contained that it seems unassailable even in its most dubious claims. Whatever the truth of Charlotte's story, it is clear, from Mr. Mays's performance, that the story she tells about herself is the one she has convinced herself to believe.

Weber thinks the play is an long-shot to be a real hit on Broadway, but he does his best to convince us that it ought to be one. This production was a hit at Playwrights Horizons earlier this season, and now they are taking a chance on a Broadway production. Wright actually met - and corresponded with Charlotte - that story is told here.

Posted: Thu - December 4, 2003 at 09:33 PM          

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