Anticipating a one-person show—even if it’s Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play, I Am My Own Wife—isn’t an altogether pleasant experience. It’s just so hard to believe that a single actor can strike up the whole band, so to speak, let alone make resonant music. Visions of Jerry Seinfeld with no Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards to bounce his passable acting off of—or any number of comparable analogies—chill the spine. And such anxious rumblings especially apply to a small-city theater scene like Charlottesville’s.
The good news for Heritage Theatre Festival’s reputation, which perhaps needs a little renewing after last summer’s hiatus, is that full-out pleasure kicked in not too long after its production of I Am My Own Wife began.
In the opening sequence, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (Malcolm Tulip), based on the real-life German transvestite who lived through both Nazism and communism in Berlin and East Berlin, steps onto the stage, smiles coyly at the audience, disappears, comes back on stage, steps toward an antique phonograph and begins to talk lovingly about how the invention was developed and how it works. Mahlsdorf then plunges over to a desk and suddenly becomes U.S. News & World Report Bureau Chief John Marks—one of seemingly countless roles Tulip played throughout the show—who, in typical postmodern fashion, is writing a letter to the playwright, Doug Wright, telling him about Charlotte. And then Marks becomes Wright, who goes to Berlin to interview Charlotte. And then Wright changes back to Charlotte. And so on as Charlotte’s incredible history—her exploration of her intricate sexuality, her Nazi father, her life as a spy for the Stasi after the war, and much more—is gradually revealed.
Tulip, along with director Gillian Eaton, made some smart choices while dealing with the obvious challenges the play presents. First of all, Tulip didn’t do a Robin Williams act, aggressively bouncing from character to character. The way Tulip eased into each part—even when executing a quick change—snuffed out any hint of disjointedness, and, in effect, kept Charlotte always in the spotlight. As a result, Wright’s initial impetus for the play—to filter labyrinthine periods in 20th century history through one psychologically layered character, and to some extent confront virility with effeminancy—was never compromised. Second of all, inherent in Tulip’s delivery as Charlotte was the natural calmness with which people recall trying times, save for bursts of emotion that are quelled before any damage is done to a human being’s fragile equilibrium.
A fine play delivered with finely manipulated skill and authenticity—what more can theatergoers ask for?