Shea shines in one-man show at 2nd Story

7:15 PM Sun, Oct 04, 2009 | Permalink
By Channing Gray

Photo / 2ndStory, Richard W. Dionne, Jr.
Ed Shea plays more than 30 characters in I Am My Own Wife at 2nd Story Theatre.

Ed Shea seldom steps out from behind his director's chair, but when he does, he puts on quite a show, as he's doing right now at his 2nd Story Theatre in Warren. Shea has taken on the role of a German transvestite in Doug Wright's one-man Pulitzer Prize-winner I Am My Own Wife, a tour de force for any actor.

Actually, Shea plays more than 30 characters in this play, subtly modulating his voice to fit the persona. There are no costume changes, no props, just Shea in a black skirt, kerchief and pearls standing in front of an audience for 90 minutes.

The play tells the real-life saga of Lothar Berfelde, who went by the name of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an openly gay transvestite who survived two of the most repressive regimes in history, the Nazis and the East German Communists. Charlotte's story came to light with the fall of the Berlin Wall, when a reporter friend of Wright's tipped him off to her. Wright spent years on the project, recording Charlotte and visiting the curious museum she kept with collections of furniture, antiques and her beloved gramophones.

In fact the play begins with Shea stepping out into the stage area in drag and delivering in a crisp German accent a lecture about Thomas Edison and his talking machines. It wasn't long after that that a woman walked out of the theater.

So maybe the opening is a little unsettling. But stick with this play and you hear a remarkable story, warts and all. Charlotte became something of a celebrity after the reunification of Germany. She was given a medal for her efforts in preserving 19th-century German culture. Then it was learned she was an informant for the East German secret police. Her actions even led to the arrest of a friend and fellow collector, who appears at the beginning of the second act. People began talking about stripping her of her medal.

But then Charlotte is an often contradictory creature, whom Shea captures in all her facets. It's often a mesmerizing performance, as Shea slips in and out of a host of characters. At times he is Wright the playwright, his reporter friend John Marks, a member of the SS, and an upbeat TV talk show host, who is interviewing Charlotte. But mostly he is Charlotte, the odd eccentric who ran a gay bar in the basement of her museum right under the noses of the Stasi.

Director Ryan Maxwell has managed to keep the action taut here, to keep things moving. But it is Shea's acting chops that are most impressive, the way he is able to hold an audience in his grasp for an hour and a half, and make this mix of people seem so believable, so three-dimensional. At the end of the show, we feel we know Charlotte, know her friends and tormentors.

Really, the whole show takes place in the imagination of the audience. It's all about story telling, as we conjure up Charlotte's collection of kitsch, her run-ins with the authorities, and her murder of her abusive father. It's a stark, bare-bones drama about a very complex person, one we are never quite sure we can trust.

For those who haven't been to 2nd Story, the seats are arranged in the round in four quadrants with a simple intersecting crosswalk where Shea stands, slowly turning to take in the audience. The titles of the vignettes that make up the script are projected on screens on either side of the performance space. Ron Allen's lighting is often dark, with quick changes here and there to usher in new scenes or characters. Director Maxwell is also responsible for the sound design, a sonic collage of buzzing aircraft, bombs exploding and the haunting sound of a distant gramophone that helps flesh out our imagination.

There were an unusual number of empty seats at Sunday's press opening, which might indicate the public is a little skeptical of a play about a transvestite. And that's too bad if true, because this is an unusual night of theater, an intriguing play with an actor who is at the top of his game. It shouldn't be missed.

I Am My Own Wife runs through Oct. 25 at 2nd Story Theatre, 28 Market St., Warren. Tickets are $25. Call (401) 247-4200.

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