I wanted very much to be an
ardent fan of Southern Comfort
the musical at CAP21, about a small community of transgender people
in rural Georgia, that has recently been extended through Nov 5. I got to it
late in its run, having heard so much about it—and it is, as word has it,
a sweetly delivered show (book and lyrics by Dan Collins, music by Julianne Wick Davis) that honors its (obvious) mission of dramatizing
the universal humanity within socially (often) outcast people. But I was not
among those swept into its warm embrace, at least never for very long at a
time.
In large measure because it’s based on a documentary film of the same
name—faithfully, so I’m informed—it has a meandering structure for
a musical, introducing its characters and dealing out its information at a
measured, “journalistic” pace, and doesn’t really gather even its appropriately
gentle narrative momentum until two thirds of the way through Act One. The
score, in a similar fashion, concentrates on tolerance, love, forbearance and
other manner of heart-tuggy sub-topics and overall lands soft.
For
those attendees who are into the show—and they are many, many, perhaps
even the majority; the extension of Southern Comfort is easily as much a product of word-of-mouth as
reviews—its relaxed enfolding would seem to be a virtue. For me, though I
was never bored or unsympathetic, I was often aware that the limits of my
endurance were being reached, and without any irritation or impatience, I was
surfeiting on gentleness. (My companion of the evening felt similarly and even
decided against remaining for Act Two.)
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