Southern Comfort

Reviewed by Suzy Evans
October 07, 2011

http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-off-off-broadway/southern-comfort-1005395442.story

The musical "Southern Comfort" is an interesting conundrum. Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis' bluegrass-infused score provides generally easy listening, but the story of a community of transgender individuals in Georgia is hard to hear at times. The complicated characters evoke sympathy, but they never get beyond their sexual identity. As they continually beg for acceptance, their plea starts to sound like a broken record.

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Southern Comfort
Reviewed By: Sandy MacDonald · Oct 7, 2011  · New York

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/reviews/10-2011/southern-comfort_42155.html

For a musical that advocates for transgender pride, Southern Comfort, now at CAP21 under Thomas Caruso's direction, does itself little favor by its inconsistent casting.

In the work by Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis, which is inspired by Kate Davis' 2000 Sundance Grand Jury Award-winning documentary of the same name about a community of transgendered friends in rural Georgia, Annette O'Toole plays Robert (né Barbara) Eads, a trans-male who died of untreated ovarian cancer in 1999 after a score of doctors refused to treat him for fear of discomfiting their regular clientele, while Jeff McCarthy portrays Eads' late-in-life true love, "Lola Cola," who had just begun embracing her inner womanhood when she and Eads grew close.