Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Two highly-anticipated shows fail to shed sufficient light on the transgender experience

• By drediman
• March 25, 2016
• No Comments

Currently in New York theater, two highly-anticipated shows are valiantly attempting to articulate the transgender experience. Unfortunately, both fall short of painting wholly convincing, nuanced portraits of or sufficiently exploring the complicated questions and issues raised by this under-represented group.

At the red-hot Public, I recently caught a performance of Southern Comfort (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED), a musical adaptation of the 2001 documentary of the same name about a small group of transgender men and women who band together in Georgia. Like the film, the musical unabashedly extols the importance of creating your own family. However, in the process of doing so, the musical over-romanticizes and genericizes the trans experience. In many ways, the show’s thick sentimentality strongly brings to mind Jonathan Larson’s Rent. However, unlike that earlier trailblazing work, Southern Comfort lacks the grit to go with its sweetness. Many of its characters feel too much like cartoon characters and Julianne Wick Davis’s sweet and accessible bluegrass-inspired score would respectively be at home in Disney’s latest animated flick (and unfortunately pales somewhat in comparison with two other bluegrass scores that are currently gracing New York’s boards, Edie Brickell’s extraordinary work in Bright Star and Robert Waldman’s rollicking songs for Roundabout’s The Robber Bridegroom Revival). Although Thomas Caruso’s genial production and Dan Collins’ book and lyrics could use more bite, Southern Comfort is being generously performed by an eleven-strong company, some of whom perform double duty playing in the lovely-sounding onstage band. In the central role of Robert, Annette O’Toole is simply breathtaking, both vocally and dramatically. She’s immersed herself so deeply and the results are authentic, complex, and deeply moving. To see her towering performance is reason enough to head on down to the Public. If only the same could be said about the rest of this perfectly pleasant show.

Further uptown in Theatre Row, Keen Company is presenting the world premiere of Anna Ziegler’s Boy (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED). The premise is supremely fascinating. Insipired by a true story, Boy tells the story of Adam, who after a circumcision accident when he was a baby, is left without a penis. Soon after this horrific incident, a well-meaning doctor persuades his parents to raise their child as a girl as “Samantha”. Ms. Ziegler’s play jumps back and forth in time, exploring the long-term consequences of this decision. In many ways, Boy is the the antithesis of Southern Comfort – instead of embracing the switch to one’s true self, it’s the story of a young man who is “tricked” into a transgender life, thereby raising potent fundamental questions about gender, sexuality, and identity. However, Boy frustratingly remains dutiful, antiseptically analyzing the inherent issues at its disposal, despite Linsay Firman’s efficient and clean production (the most fascinating thing about the show just may be Sandra Goldmark’s striking mirror-image set). Where the play should be messy and devastating, as the subject matter demands, it remains cool, neat, and way too tidy. The play’s fairy tale conclusion feels as unearned as the one in another similarly overly-simplisitc play about sexuality and identity, Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola Straight, which ironically is also currently playing in the same theater complex. Leading a solid cast is Bobby Steggert, a sensitive young actor who has made a name for himself in Broadway musicals such as Big Fish and the recent Ragtime revival, and who is excellent here as Adam/Samantha. It’s great to see him successfully stretching his range.

SOUTHERN COMFORT
Off-Broadway, Musical
The Public Theater
2 hours, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Through March 27

BOY
Off-Broadway, Play
Keen Company at the Clurman Theatre
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through April 9