Exit Stage Right is bringing back the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play I Am My Own Wife to the Maltese stage this month.

The play, written by Doug Wright, was previously performed 10 years ago to rave reviews and is being revived due to popular demand.

Based on the true-life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002), born Lothar Berfelde, the play will be performed at Theatre Next Door, Magħtab, from November 17-26.

The play recounts the story of Charlotte who, although biologically male, identified as a woman from an early age and was perfectly comfortable wearing demure black dresses with a string of pearls as her only accessory.

She had a passion for furniture of a certain period which she salvaged from bombed houses in Berlin during World War II and eventually opened a museum. She became Germany’s most celebrated transgender woman and a decorated national hero.

A one-woman show, performed by a man

However, questions later arose as to how Charlotte not only evaded both the oppressive Nazi and Communist regimes of East Germany, but she did so being openly gay, in female attire, while running a gay and lesbian nightclub in her cellar, right under the noses of the Stasi – the GDR’s notorious secret police. Did her survival require her to make some morally dubious choices along the way?

This piece of theatre – “a one-woman show, performed by a man” – requires the protagonist to play Charlotte, together with Charlotte’s perspective of some other 35 different characters who existed in her life at significant moments and who are, therefore, entwined in her stories.

Directed by Nanette Brimmer, Alan Paris flits seamlessly in and out of all these characters, bringing them to life in a dizzying display of theatrical bravura.

I Am My Own Wife will be staged at Theatre Next Door from November 17 to 26 at 8pm. Booking is open. For more information, visit tnd.com.mt/whats-on/i-am-my-own-wife.