Not-so-sweet Charlotte

Surviving the oppressive regimes of the Nazis and the East German Communists as a man dressed in a black shift and pearls would, in itself, be a singular achievement. But the transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf went one better. She was also a noted antiques collector, a self-proclaimed murderer, a decorated national hero and a spy.

The fascinating true story of Von Mahlsdorf is at the heart of “I Am My Own Wife.” Douglas Wright’s off-Broadway play recently opened at Playwrights Horizons to rave reviews, especially for Jefferson Mays, the relative unknown who portrays Von Mahlsdorf along with more than 40 other characters in the one-man show.

But in the play, the classic psychosexual tease of the transvestite -- “I am not who you think I am” -- takes on new resonance. Reflecting Wright’s decade-long research, which included interviews and letters exchanged with the real Von Mahlsdorf, press clippings, and assorted government files, the Charlotte in “Wife” morphs from the iconoclastic heroine of the first act to an all-too-human and possibly sinister force in the second.

In writing this strange tale, Wright says he had to confront the elusiveness of truth, ambiguities of history, and myths and lies that almost everyone invents about themselves in the course of a life.

“As a dramatist, I wasn’t driven by the personal agenda of the historian,” Wright says. “So I found the fact that the world was so eager to believe her stories as truth more interesting than the absolute truth. I was fascinated by the question of what palliative her particularly mythology was providing.”

Wright first heard about Von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde, from his journalist friend John Marks. As Berlin bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report, Marks discovered her in 1992 giving guided tours of her own extensive collection of fine late-19th century antique clocks, gramophones and furniture in her turn-of-the-century mansion.

“I think she may well be the most singular, eccentric individual the Cold War ever birthed,” Marks said in a letter to Wright, who immediately caught a plane. “She’s way up your alley.”

Indeed, the playwright had achieved notable success on both the stage and screen with “Quills,” which depicted one of the 18th century’s most notorious iconoclasts, the Marquis de Sade. But even the colorful Marquis seemed to pale next to a character who personally told Wright she had bludgeoned to death her abusive Nazi father; narrowly escaped Hitler’s jack-booted Gestapo; ran a gay bar right under the nose of the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police; and received a medal of honor on national television from the Minister of Culture of a reunited Germany.

Secret police files unearthed

Wright knew only part of that story when he began to graph Von Mahlsdorf’s odyssey. He says he was first motivated to write a play about her because of her defiant individuality in the face of overwhelming odds. He realized what that might mean for other marginalized minorities. “As someone who grew up gay in the Bible Belt of Texas, I found the story of her life such a powerful curative,” Wright says. “She blossomed into her own homosexuality nurtured by a lesbian aunt and gay uncle and I wanted to immortalize her [in a play] as a groundbreaking gay heroine.”

However, midway through Wright’s research, he received a call from Marks, telling him that Stasi files had come to light that appeared to paint Von Mahlsdorf as a willing -- even enthusiastic -- informant who betrayed colleagues in exchange for immunity and possible favors. (At one point, they were apparently so entwined that the Stasi police gave Von Mahlsdorf fashion tips and encouraged her to wear makeup to entrap and extract information from American soldiers.)

The press had a field day -- “Mata Hari Was a Man!,” “Comrade Charlotte: Is the Disguise She’s Wearing More Than Just a Dress?”

Now Wright had to face the possibility that many of Von Mahlsdorf’s stories, including the murder of her father (for which there were no records), could have been fabricated. And when he personally confronted her about the Stasi files, she artfully deflected his questions.

When Wright pressed her, she claimed that Alfred Kirschner, a gay friend and fellow collector, had begged her to give him up in order to save herself. Kirschner had died in 1979, so there was no one to corroborate her story. But he did write loving letters to Von Mahlsdorf and left her his entire legacy in a will -- hardly what one would expect him to do if he suspected her of any betrayal.

Hounded by the press and fearful of the rise of Neo-Nazism, Von Mahlsdorf emigrated to Sweden, where she died in April 2002.

The Stasi connection, complicated because the files were so ambiguous and contradictory, led to a five-year writer’s block, Wright said. It was unlocked only three years ago when he was invited to the Sundance Theatre Lab to work on the project with director Moises Kaufman (“Gross Indecency,” “The Laramie Project”), dramaturge Robert Blacker and Jefferson Mays.

“I told Doug to tell me what he loved about Charlotte, and soon the Stasi files began to disappear,” Kaufman says. “Then we discussed what was causing him such discomfort. I said, ‘You don’t have to know what to make of it. Let’s create a space where you can pose the questions you have.’ So the play became about how we reconstruct history and who gets to tell the story. But it also became Douglas’ personal experience with Charlotte and his need for a hero and what happens when that hero turns out to be less than perfect.”

As a result, the play calls for Mays to portray several characters, including Wright, Marks, Kirschner, Stasi officials, and even some American GIs looking for souvenirs to take back to the U.S. The form is both dramatic and documentary-like. As the complications of truth versus fiction increase, the play pivots between Wright’s slightly ditzy artist, who wants to believe in his fantasy, and Marks, who is pressing for the literal truth.

“John is the reality check in the play,” Wright says. For example, when told of Von Mahlsdorf’s defense of her betrayal of Kirschner, he scoffs, “It’s like some Cold War thriller written by Armistead Maupin.”

The believability factor

Actor Mays says he believes everything Von Mahlsdorf says onstage; that her story is emotionally true for her -- whether or not it really is true. “In order to survive she had to mythologize herself,” he says. “We all do it. I tell stories that I’ve appropriated from family mythology, and mythology has a way of becoming more important than the truth. But that can get us into trouble. Because the truth can come up from behind and bite us.”

Mays adds that what holds true for individuals can also hold true for nations. “If we advance the mythology of freedom and ourselves as these great freedom-loving liberators making the world safe for democracy, and then cannot find weapons of mass destruction, then it can be an embarrassment and it makes that image suspect to the rest of the world,” he says.

Ultimately, Wright says, Von Mahlsdorf is even more heroic in the end because her flaws have made her more fully human. “It was not just about preservation at any cost but the compromises she had to make in order to protect what she believed to be more precious; not only her defiant, eccentric and proud identity but also the autonomy and community of homosexuals living under a repressive regime. In the end, I have to confess that it is an empathetic portrait. I found her evasiveness maddening at times, but here I was a privileged gay white playwright from the suburbs and here she was, nearly 70, who’d survived two regimes in a black dress and pearls. I couldn’t pull on my judicial robes and render a verdict so easily. I was fascinated by her, appalled by her, confused by her, but always loved her.”

But the playwright acknowledges that, as the subtitle “Studies for a Play” indicates, the story of Von Mahlsdorf’s life may still be unfolding. New information may yet shed light on some of the unresolved issues in the play. In the process, it would of necessity affect the play, allowing the audience “to pin down” the character -- which, for the dramatist, would be a pity.

Von Mahlsdorf had a brother and sister, Wright says, but he admits he wasn’t too upset when they informed him through a lawyer that they would not speak of a sibling they saw as a family embarrassment. “I didn’t want to make her less mysterious,” he says. In fact, he recalls that at Sundance, Kaufman asked him what he wanted audiences to take away from their experience with Von Mahlsdorf.

“I told him that when they go out to eat afterward, I want some of them to believe her and some of them not to believe her. And to spend the rest of the meal arguing about it,” he says. “Hopefully, [the play] pulls the rug out from under you.”