Erin Cummings, Randy Harrison, Paul Anthony Stewart, and Alexis Molnar contemplate family in HARBOR (photo by Carol Rosegg)
Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 8, $70
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org
After having written and/or cowritten the book and/or lyrics to the movie-based Broadway musicals Elf and The Wedding Singer, Chad Beguelin gets a lot more serious and literary-minded in the workmanlike dysfunctional family drama Harbor. Referencing Edith Wharton, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and, both directly and indirectly and most influentially, Tennessee Williams, Beguelin creates a plodding narrative in this contemporary tale about parents and children. Erin Cummings, in her New York stage debut, stars as Donna Adams, a low-rent singer living out of a van with her smart but weird teenage daughter, Lottie (Alexis Molnar). The two pay a surprise visit to Donna’s younger brother, Kevin (Queer as Folk’s Randy Harrison), who lives in a well-decorated home in Sag Harbor with his husband, architect Ted (Paul Anthony Stewart). At first, wannabe writer Kevin can’t wait to get rid of his manipulative, conniving sister, but as an overnight turns into a longer stay, the four characters are forced to look deep inside themselves to figure out just what it is that they want and need out of their less-than-perfect lives. Like the travel pamphlet Kevin is writing about Sag Harbor, Beguelin (Judas & Me) merely skims the surface of this drawn-out story of the sins of the father (and mother). Although the cast is fine, the individual relationships never quite come together, and the protagonist, Donna, is too unlikable from the very start. Beguelin and director Mark Lamos (A. R. Gurney’s Black Tie, Indian Blood, Buffalo Gal) never find a smooth rhythm, with plot points jumping around too much. And although the Playbill says that “the play takes place over several weeks,” it actually goes on for several months, which gets confusing (but that misstatement is obviously not the fault of the writer, director, or cast). This Harbor ends up having too much sag and not enough lift.