They Are Their Own Show
- Mar 21
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 19
A review of I Am My Own Wife
by Ellory Woodford, age 12
On January 26th, I attended I Am My Own Wife at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre. This show, written by Doug Wright, was presented by Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and was directed by Alexander Coddington. I Am My Own Wife tells a powerful story of the LGBTQ+ community through WWII, an era in history when our focus is often completely on the many racial and ethnic issues of the time, though others faced persecution as well. This show helps audiences to not only think about these issues in the past, but also in the present. It is the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf’s journey as a trans woman in the midst of WWII, how she survived, what happened to her after the events of the war, and how she coped by collecting antiques to start her own museum in her house. Many of the production team were members of the LGBTQ+ community, highlighting voices to be heard and stories to be told.
In the majority of plays, you have a cast with at least five actors. Sometimes you have way more than that! I Am My Own Wife had neither. It had one actor, Jonathan Riker, who played every role in the show. There were over 30 roles and Riker played each one, sometimes in the same scene. This was especially impressive and well done because, although most of the time Riker stayed in their main costume for the act no matter what character they were, you could still tell the difference between the characters based off of their physicality, voice, and mannerisms with each character. As an actor, I know it's hard enough to come up with all those things for one character, let alone numerous characters at the same time.
In I Am My Own Wife, Riker never left the stage, but still had multiple costume changes. This was done in a very fascinating manner in my opinion. To execute this, there was a combination of multiple things: Riker wore a black slip underdress and a pair of tights as a base layer that made them able to switch clothes on stage easily and quickly, as well as putting costumes into the set. Within the first 5 minutes of Act 2, Riker has a costume change. For this change, they put the actor’s costume into a shelf that in Act 1 was seemingly just a part of the scenery of the magnificent set.
If I only had one word to describe the set it would be…wait, no, never mind. That's not possible. One word couldn’t be enough to even begin to describe this beautiful, intricate, layered set, designed by Sarah Hunt-Frank. The set of I Am My Own Wife had four different layers to it, each as beautiful as the last. At the top of the show, it looks to be a normal set with a dark teal wall in the back with golden detailing. However, as the show progresses, it is revealed that the wall was a scrim, hiding some beautiful antiques as the light behind the scrim turns on. Once again, it looks to be another dark teal wall with gold detailing behind it. But once again, the light turns on, the scrim is revealed, more magnificent works of art await. By then, it seems as if there couldn’t possibly be more layers to this set. Right? Wrong. A little bit into Act 2, we see the final layer, full of gorgeous, intricate, antique clocks.
I Am My Own Wife does a great job of highlighting the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community through one actor telling one person’s story. I would recommend this show to audiences 15 and up as it does deal with some adult themes and heavy content. Although I am younger than my recommendation, I still enjoyed this show and its messages, so some younger mature teens might also take interest in this powerful story of perseverance and resilience in hard times.
See more shows like this at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre!
Full designer credits: directed by Alexander Coddington; designed and created by Maaz Ahmed, Sarah Hunt-Frank, Adam Hastings, Leo Madson, Martilia Marechal, Raeleen McMillion, Jazmín Aurora Medina, Josh Schmidt, Lauren Marie Stoner, Simone Tegge, Grayson Thobe, Dev Wiensch, and Emily Marie Wilke.
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