I Am My Own Wife
About Face Theatre at the Museum of Contemporary Art
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Perhaps these tryouts will plant seeds for more significant works later. But to earn an audience’s trust, the organizers need to avoid the kind of misleading marketing that taints I Am My Own Wife, the only show with a lengthy run. Although festival brochures and newspaper ads identify three other shows as low-priced workshops, nothing would suggest to a paying audience member that the $20 I Am My Own Wife is anything but a finished work—that is, until you open your program to discover that it too is being workshopped. The nearest thing to a statement of truth appears on About Face’s Web page, which calls the production an “exclusive preview” before a New York premiere this spring. But given the play’s three other presentations since 2000—including a 25-performance run at the La Jolla Playhouse last year—it’s difficult to know what’s exclusive about this one.
I Am My Own Wife opens with the astonishingly precise and mercurial Jefferson Mays entering as Charlotte, fully costumed in an austere black dress and kerchief, tasteful string of pearls, and orthopedic shoes. Comfortably ensconced in her museum of antique furniture, a collection to which she’s devoted her life, Charlotte tells us about one of her prize possessions, an original Edison talking machine. Speaking in guarded cadences, she describes the object as though eulogizing a lover.
But judging by the episodes he’s chosen to depict, he didn’t have a lot of material to choose from. Despite numerous interviews with Charlotte over two years, Wright hasn’t brought her story to life. A handful of gripping incidents doesn’t amount to a narrative; we never get a richly detailed account of a life lived against impossible odds. Perhaps Charlotte was not forthcoming in interviews. Perhaps Wright lacked the skills to draw her out. But as any fledgling journalist knows, if you don’t get the story, you move on and write something else.
