80. HARBOR
As
entertaining in a familiar way as is Chad Beguelin’s new dramedy, HARBOR, at 59E59, it
only occasionally rings true, and seems uncomfortably close to being a sit-com setup. Its plot
concerns a gay couple living seemingly perfect lives (including a hyphenated last
name) in an upscale Long Island town when they are disrupted by unexpected interlopers.
(It’s another example of THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER syndrome, seen earlier this
season in ME AND JEZEBEL.) Kevin (Randy Harrison), who has been trying for ten
years to write a novel but struggles even to write a promotional brochure,
lives with his husband, Ted (Paul Anthony Stewart), in a “birthday cake” of a
house in beautiful Sag Harbor on the North Shore. Ted is a successful
architect, although his business has been off recently, and it is his money
(whose color is replicated on the walls of their tastefully appointed living
room, designed by Andrew Jackness) that keeps Kevin free to imagine he’ll one
day succeed at finishing his book. Ted controls the purse strings and also the
aspirations of the docile Kevin, who discovers in the course of the play a
yearning he never fully realized was there.
Left to right: Erin Cummings, Randy Harrison, Paul Anthony Stewart, Alexis Molnar. Photo: Carol Rosegg
This discovery is precipitated by
the surprise appearance of Kevin’s promiscuous, white-trash sister, Donna (Erin
Cummings), a dyed redhead in skintight, rocker-type duds (thanks to costume
designer Candice Donnelly), who drives up one summer day in an old van
accompanied by her precocious 15-year-old daughter, Lottie (Alexis Molnar), a
kid whose current reading is Edith Wharton’s HOUSE OF MIRTH. Lottie lives in the van
with her mother; as she says, her broad knowledge of literature and life is
the result not of home schooling but of “van schooling.” Donna’s feeble
attempts to talk like a hip teen, such as using the word “biatch,” are constantly
ridiculed by her embarrassed daughter. These “semi-homeless” wanderers show up
because Donna is pregnant and, as eventually revealed, wants Kevin and Ted to
adopt the baby, who she feels totally incapable of raising. She also hopes to
get a gig as a $30,000 a year singer on a cruise ship, a dream as unlikely to
occur as her brother’s finishing his novel.
The kicker is that Ted is totally,
unequivocally opposed to having kids, whom he views as Petri-dish breeding
grounds for biological disaster, while Kevin finds that he has an inner longing
to be a daddy (actually, he says, a mommy), and the manipulative Donna uses all
her cunning to fan whatever sparks the dilemma has created. At the same time,
the tension between Donna and Lottie, who desperately wants a chance at a
“normal” life, grows more intense, especially after Ted discovers an unforeseen
fondness for this teenage whiz kid (Donna says, “She’s like Asian smart”); he
even tracks down the phone number of the father she’s never met in
Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, spurring a phone call by Lottie that provides the
two-hour play’s most touching moment.
The problem of gay couples adopting
a child is often in the news, but, as depicted here, Kevin and Ted’s response
to the issue is not much different from how a straight couple with opposite views might react to
the same situation. What differs is the opportunity it gives the playwright for
some brutally cutting sarcasm (mainly from Ted) at the expense of privileged
straight parents and their obsessive preoccupation with the specialness of
their babies; that is something he believes he and Kevin will, thankfully,
never have to deal with as they spend their time living the good life of travel and good booze.
Chad Beguelin’s dialogue is shot
through with conventional gay-inflected lines, some it self-deprecating, hardly any
of it surprising. Because Donna is so outspoken, she thinks little of making
tasteless wisecracks about gay sex. It is Lottie, however, who refers to
the town where Kevin and Ted live as “Fag Harbor.” Yikes. People often spout
lines that seem to come from the writer’s need to slide in a zinger at regular intervals; many come off
as anything-for-a-laugh attempts rather than organic comments grounded in character
and situation. Ted, telling Kevin he’ll never succeed at being a writer, says
of Kevin’s work-in-progress: “A cookbook by Hitler would have a better chance.” Or,
in a line you might expect to hear on the Borscht Belt, teenager Lottie
remarks: “I’ve seen so many assholes I could be a proctologist.” Donna, who can be verbally deft, can also
display unconvincing ignorance, as when she remarks that she used to think a
misogynist was someone who gave massages. Da da boom. And I wonder how many
people get some of the dated references, such as the one to Charles Nelson
Reilly. Weed (which Donna is somehow able to afford despite being broke) and
alcohol help spur much of the talk.
The situations often seem contrived merely to motivate
a confrontation, and arguments sometimes spring up like Jack-in-the-boxes when
there’s a need to step on the playwriting gas. The light comedy atmosphere of the first act
morphs into more serious territory in act two, especially after Ted makes clear
just how immature and dependent on him he thinks Kevin is, and there is an
interesting conflation of issues at the end that is resolved by the play’s sole
surprising twist, which may or not convince you.
HARBOR is effectively staged by the dependable Mark
Lamos, and most of the performances are lively and well-honed, although I thought
Randy Harrison (of TV’s “Queer as Folks”) on the bland side. The technical components of
scenery, lighting (Japhy Weideman), costumes, and sound (John Gromada) do what
they need to, and the overall production is of high quality. HARBOR will
entertain you, but, even if you've never been to Sag Harbor, you may nonetheless feel you’ve been here before.
