Theatre doesn’t get much better than the Sydney Theatre Company’s presentation of Doug Wright’s play ‘I am my Own Wife’ which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

With painstaking research Wright brings to life a remarkable character, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1926-2000). Charlotte, a flamboyant gay transsexual, was something of a legendary/folklore figure in home town of Berlin, and has been the subject of a best selling autobiography and an extensive documentary. Now Wright’s play, which is currently on an international tour, has brought von Mahlsdorf’s to the world stage.

The playwright grew up gay in the conservative southern part of America. This was tough enough. The starting point of his play on Charlotte was to explore what it must have been like for Charlotte to have survived living life as a transvestite through two of the most oppressive totalitarian regimes in history.

For his research Wright conducted several lengthy interviews with Charlotte from 1992 to 1994 and also based his play on newspaper accounts of her life, interaction with key people in her life, and sighting the controversial Stasi file held by the East German Secret Police.

With ‘I am my Own Wife’, Wright has come up with an intriguing, turbulent, warts and all portrait. There’s the Charlotte who beat her father to death with a blunt instrument in anger at the abuse of his mother..the Charlotte defiant in her sexuality… the Charlotte who created her own homegrown museum featuring 19th century German artifacts such as period furniture, antiques, and early musical instruments, which East Berliners flocked to… Charlotte who betrayed a friend to the Stasi…the Charlotte, who during the Cold War-when the Russians threatened to destroy a Weimar era cabaret in Berlin’s red light district, rescued each table, cane back chair and liquor bottle and hid them in her basement. In 1992, the German Cultural Ministry awarded her a prestigious medal for her preservation efforts.

Wright devised the play as a one person show, writing in some 35 other characters, He includes himself in as one of the characters as he attempts to unravel the Charlotte story. Other characters include a television talk show host, Stasi officials, American GIs, SS officers, and several of Charlotte’s family members and friends.

Wright and director Moises Kaufman selected one of New York’s major theatre actors, Jefferson Mays, to perform the show, and Mays has since gone on to win numerous accolades including the 2004 Tony Award for best actor. Mays delivers one of the finest performances that has ever graced the Opera House’s Drama Theatre.

Kaufman’s creative team shine with Derek McLane’s exquisite set of Charlotte’s room and her furniture museum, and David Lander’s excellent lighting design.

‘I am My Own Wife’ was a memorable night in the theatre, spotlighting a fascinating life story.