Mark Saturno portrays Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in Pittsburgh Public Theater's "I Am My Own Wife." Click photo for larger image. 'I Am My Own Wife' Where: Pittsburgh Public Theater, O'Reilly Theater, Downtown. When: Through May 14; Tues.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 and 7 p.m.; May 9 at 7 p.m.; no performance April 26. Tickets: $29-$48; students or 26-and-under $12 in advance (Fri.-Sat. nights, only at door); 412-316-1600.

A quest for understanding isn't necessarily dramatic, but it can be compelling. The Public Theater's "I Am My Own Wife" is an account of just such a quest, but whether it's gripping theater depends on whether you get much involved in the quest yourself.

I can't say that I do. But I am intrigued by the story, which is undoubtedly strange.

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde, was a transvestite who came to adulthood in the last days of Hitler's Germany and the early days of the German Democratic Republic. She created her Grunderzeit Museum in an East Berlin mansion, dedicated to preserving the ornate furnishings, clocks and gramophones of the 1890s and providing a rendezvous for a gay subculture.

Miraculously, Charlotte survived the epidemic spying of the GDR. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Charlotte was discovered by the West German media, who celebrated her as a hero of resistance. One person determined to understand her story was Doug Wright, a playwright from Texas, who wrote her to say that, having himself grown up gay in the repressive Bible Belt, he couldn't imagine how she survived the brutal suppression of gays by the Nazis and Communists.

And that's the story the play tells, or rather, the double story -- both of Charlotte's life and of playwright Wright's pursuit of it.

A character in his own play, Wright starts learning German and goes to Berlin to interview Charlotte. She proves a willing witness, since she is proud of her museum and its dedication to traditional domestic values. But gradually her version of her life is supplemented by recovered files from the Stasi, the omnipresent GDR secret police, for whom hundreds of thousands of East Germans became informants, willing or otherwise.

Charlotte is revealed as one of those informants, which brings us to Alfred Kirschner, a fellow homosexual and collector, possibly her lover, whom she denounced to the Stasi. What were her motives?

Most poignantly, what sort of a hero is Charlotte, not just for the scandal-obsessed German media, but for an American playwright seeking a gay hero? "I need to believe in her stories as much as she does," he says.

As drama, this generally static play relies mainly on the gradual revelation of Charlotte's story and of its effect on Wright. There are some surprises, but the drama quotient is low, with conflict muffled by the dependence on narrative recall rather than present-tense encounter.

As theater, though, the play is an undoubtedly theatrical presentation by a solo actor on an abstract and glittering stage of memory, designed by Beowulf Boritt and lit with warmth by Peter West.

The actor is Mark Saturno, who plays Charlotte, Alfred, Wright, his soldier friend and many journalists and agents, all with different accents, often speaking German. You are never confused as to who is speaking, and what German isn't translated is understandable.

It comes to more than 30 roles, many of them just passing voices but some given surprising substance with a look or a tone. Saturno is master of them all, both the varied voices and the deft physical details. I'm particularly taken with his Alfred. There is an opacity to his Charlotte that I think is appropriate: Behind her dignified reserve is an unspoken, unknowable mystery.

"I Am My Own Wife" opened off-Broadway in 2003 to acclaim for both play and actor, Jefferson Mays. Moved to Broadway, it won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award for Best Play and the best actor Tony for Mays. I understand the latter, since it was a wonderful performance, but I am still bemused by the Best Play accolades. Theatrical it is, because of the charisma of the performance, but it's less play than storytelling, which isn't the same thing. And I just don't feel an emotional payoff to Wright's emotional quest.

But there is one emotional jolt: As you exit the theater, you encounter in the lobby the very picture of Charlotte as a young boy that she sends to Wright. Though it hits you with a gulp of recognition, that's emotion extrinsic to the play.

Beside the theatricality of solo presentation, the best part of the two-hour evening is its questioning the dualities of male/female and hero/villain. The former turns out to be as insufficient as the latter to measure human variety.

For this, Charlotte proposes her own metaphor. Wright asks to what extent she repairs or refinishes her beloved furniture, and she replies that a piece's nicks, cuts and stains are "proof of its history." They are "a mirror," she says, "of living."

So is Charlotte, a remarkable person in the gallery of human possibility.

Rosa von Praunheim's 90-minute 1992 film, "I Am My Own Woman," tells Charlotte's story through interviews and re-enactments. It will be shown tonight at 7 at the Public; admission free; reservations recommended at 412-316-1600.