THEATER REVIEW |

Some heroes have feet of clay. But the feet of the would-be hero that noted playwright Doug Wright introduces us to in his Tony Award-winning, one-actor saga, "I Am My Own Wife," are encased in heavy black lace-up shoes.

They look a bit incongruous with the gray hausfrau dress, genteel pearls and headscarf worn in the Seattle Repertory Theatre production by actor Nick Garrison.

But there are many things that don't quite match up about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the late German transvestite whose contradictions are crucial to Wright's brilliantly multifaceted character study and Garrison's impressive performance.

Wright was understandably fascinated by the mere idea of Charlotte (born Lothar Berfelde). An open cross-dresser since youth, Charlotte somehow survived the brutal homophobic regimes of the Nazis and the East German communists.

And in the worst of times, she indulged her passion for antique furnishings by acquiring enough carved tables and chairs, grandfather clocks and vintage gramophone cylinders to stock her private museum — and, in the 1990s, when Wright knew her, win a medal from the German government. But at what cost did it all come? At whose expense?

Wright's ingenuously constructed script layers riveting dramatic storytelling, witty commentary, and unsettling moral and aesthetic inquiry.

And in Rep artistic head Jerry Manning's cogent staging, Jennifer Zeyl's towering curio shop of a set serves as a double metaphor: it's a lovingly attended shrine to German craftsmanship, and a haunted house of 20th-century horrors.

The play is dominated by Charlotte's twinkly, unreliable anecdotes, issued by Garrison in an admirably fluid blend of English and German.

But other vivid characters, including Wright himself, appear, too.

The writer learns of Charlotte through a friend. And as he repeatedly interviews her in Berlin with a play in mind, his curiosity and excitement are infectious.

His need to valorize a fellow gay man who triumphed over the vicious bigotry that claimed so many lives is a universal yearning — and a poignant one.

As Charlotte demurely regales us with re-enacted tales of an abusive childhood, a prison stint, a gay cabaret and her exploits vanquishing evil, her saga does indeed, as Wright writes, resemble "a Cold War thriller written by Armistead Maupin."

But the truth is far more slippery. And when her accounts are challenged in the press, and charges of collaborating with and profiting from the horrors of the German past are lodged, none of us is let off the hook.

Though Wright is far too crafty a dramatist to pose them directly, "I Am My Own Wife" confronts us with queasy dilemmas: What would each of us have done in Charlotte's sensible shoes? Are moral compromise and heroism mutually exclusive?

The Rep's long-planned production of the play hinges on a unique local actor who seems to have been training for this role for years.

Garrison was thrilling a while ago as a very different sort of German transvestite in the musical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" at Rebar. And he sings German Weimar-era tunes (and wears a woman's slip) in his band The Love Markets.

Some jitters threw off his timing a bit on opening night. But Garrison is an impressive quick-change artist who adroitly assumes his many personae — a butch lesbian aunt, a boorish talk-show host, persecuted black marketeer, a sneering spymaster, et al.

He is most compelling as the deceptively prim Charlotte, whether recounting her adventures, or silently caressing the objets d'art paid for with far more valuable currency than Deutsch marks.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com