Annette O’Toole and Jeff McCarthy in Southern Comfort at The Public Theater, New York. Picture: Carol Rosegg
Southern Comfort continues at The Public Theater, New York until 27 March.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
From the Oscar-nominated The Danish Girl to the reality-television adventures of Caitlyn Jenner – formerly known as Bruce Jenner – transgender is a hot topic. Now The Public Theater adds poignantly to the conversation with its presentation of Southern Comfort.
This heartfelt, splendidly acted but resolutely low-key Off-Broadway musical, which has seen developmental stagings in New York and a world premiere at Barrington Stage in Massachusetts, deals with a small group of transgender individuals living in the rural South. Functioning as a loving family-cum-support group, they meet once a month on a Sunday, and the big event of the year is their attendance at the annual transgender conference and ball, known as Southern Comfort, held in the nearby metropolis of Atlanta.
The show is based on an award-winning 2001 documentary film of the same name directed by Kate Davis. It was conceived for the stage by Robert DuSold and Thomas Caruso, who has also directed in fluid cinematic fashion. The script is the work of Dan Collins, who also wrote the lyrics to Julianne Wick Davis’ music. The score has a heavy country and western lilt, which melds easily with the storytelling.
The central character of both the movie and the musical is Robert Eads, who was born a woman and in mid-life became a man. Eads, who functions as the patriarch of his group of friends, is dying of ovarian cancer, being killed, as he says, by the last feminine part of him.
Doctors have refused to treat him for fear of discomforting their patients. But in the masterful portrayal of Annette O’Toole, Eads’ spirit, in good ol’ boy fashion, is alive and kicking. He is experiencing the exhilaration of new love with a person named Lola Cola (a terrific Jeff McCarthy), the owner of an Atlanta home repair business who is tentatively – quite tentatively – making the transition from being John to womanhood.
The story begins as Eads’ group anxiously awaits the first appearance of Lola at one of their Sunday get-togethers. Present are Eads’ two transgendered surrogate adult sons, Jackson (Jeffrey Kuhn) and Sam (Donnie Cianciotto, the show’s one actual transgender actor), and Sam’s partner, Melanie (Robin Skye), a woman who has found in Sam the first man who didn’t make her want to hide under her bed.
In contrast to the happiness of Sam and Melanie, Jackson, who is in love with a transgender woman named Carly (Aneesh Sheth), is in a state of agitation and worrying how he can afford to complete his surgery so that he can give full male ‘satisfaction’ to Carly. He also angrily resents the acceptance of Lola into the group, feeling she is a ‘drag queen’ rather than a true woman inside.
The growing depth of the relationship between Eads and Lola, and the resolution of the contretemps between the former and Jackson provide the twin spines of the story, which is told without sensationalism or overt politicking for a cause.
However, the show makes clear the courage and anguish – the rejection of parents and old friends, the effects on their livelihoods, dangerous medical treatments – that accompany the characters’ choices to become the person they know is inside them.
The cast offers dazzling portrayals of these gender-complex personas. Fitted with a trim goatee and moustache and dressed in Western garb, O’Toole is totally convincing as the vibrant Eads, whose body has been slimmed by illness. She endows the character with great heart and macho spirit.
McCarthy’s Lola is even more remarkable, He embodies with great ease both the growing feminity of Lola, with a dark Louise Brooks-type wig covering his own shock of white hair, and the masculine sturdiness of John, a businessman whose sex appeal captivates his female customers.
The bravery it takes for Lola to finally attend the Southern Comfort ball with Robert is palpable, and when John sings in a robust baritone about his/her conflicting natures in a song called ‘Bird’, it’s a totally compelling summing up of the show’s theme.
The score has several of these introspective numbers given to various characters, interspersed among more upbeat numbers. There are also some fetchingly delicate love songs.
Under David Lutkens’ music direction, a five-piece band imbues the score with a rich musicality, while four of the musicians also supply mood-setting and back-up vocals as well as portraying various characters in the story.
With their uniformly bluegrass emphasis, however, the songs after awhile begin to sound pretty much alike. They also tend to instil over the proceedings a fairly soft focus; some grit might be useful. While compelling for the most part, the proceedings rarely become electrifying, and in its final moments it threatens to become a bit of a sentimental weepie.
In the overall, it’s the subject matter rather than presentation – as accomplished as it is – that gives Southern Comfort its groundbreaking importance.
Ron Cohen
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