Hats off to the five-member jury that awarded the Pulitzer
Prize in drama to Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own
Wife.” Smart choice. It doesn’t always happen. But easy choice,
too.
When “Wife” opened last December on Broadway, it bowled me over: “Once in a blue moon a play comes
along that restores my belief in the vitality of the theater,” I wrote. “Wife” bowled everyone
over. The raves were unanimous. For the actor, too. Jefferson Mays is, after all, the
sine qua non of this one-man piece. “Mays gives a virtuoso performance the likes of which comes
along once in many blue moons,” my review went on. “It is a spectacular
achievement, but to describe it that way is to give a misleading impression.
Playing “multiple roles, chief among them a singular Berliner whose transvestitism is only one
aspect of her unique identity … Mays illuminates his impersonations with subtlety, not fireworks.
He re-creates Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who was a real-life figure, with a controlled,
riveting intensity. His fusion of intelligence, feelings, irony and humor radiates heat and light, but
purposely kept at room temperature. This allows Charlotte’s bizarre survival story from the
Nazi and Communist eras to unfold as part of daily experience rather than as blinding
revelation.”
The Pulitzer jurors were Ben Brantley, chief drama critic of The New York Times, who
chaired the panel; Robert Brustein, theater critic of The New Republic and former artistic director
of American Repertory Theater in Boston; Karen D’Sousa, drama critic of the San Jose Mercury
News; Michael Phillips, drama critic of the Chicago Tribune; and Linda Winer, drama critic of
Newsday.
In June we’ll find out how smart the Tony
Awards committee is. You’d think that “Wife” is a shoe-in for
best play and Mays would win, hands down, for best actor. With the Tonys, however, even
when the smart choice is the easy choice, you never know.
