Gay playwright Chad Beguelin’s disturbing play, Harbor, is being presented by Quince Productions onstage at Studio X in Philadelphia. Harbor is one of the plays featured in the Sixth Annual Gay Fest, Philadelphia’s LGBT Theatre Festival, which runs August 12 -27, 2016.

Harbor’s plot explores a happily married gay couple who are unexpectedly forced to face one partner’s child abuse, homeless relatives (one of whom is a toxic presence), and the true meanings of life, personal fulfillment, and love.

We meet an older woman, Donna (Jessica Snow), and a young one named Lottie (Rachel Berkman) in a van heading towards Sag Harbor to meet newlyweds Ted (Andy Shaw) and Kevin (Michael E. Manley) who live in a beautiful home in exclusive Sag Harbor. Ted and Kevin appear to be successful and happy until Donna calls to say that they are a few blocks away in a gas station and can they come for a visit. Immediately, Kevin is struck nearly senseless as the dread of meeting his sister after all these years of avoidance slams home. As it turns out, Kevin’s sister was uninvited to the wedding for a number of good reasons, and is now unemployed, penniless and homeless, with her teenage daughter Lottie in tow. The plot would appear to be as visible as a locomotive until more secrets, horrors, and pain are drawn out like pus from a carbuncle.

Producing Artistic Director Rich Rubin directs this intense drama, deftly allowing each actor to shine in their respective roles.

The runaway train of the piece is Donna. As portrayed by Jessica Snow, we immediately hate her disgusting guts through her rabidly homophobic insults constantly aimed at both her brother and his husband she has never met. Many in the audience found her repulsive insults funny, but they only served to define her totally corrupted heart. Hers is an amazing performance. Snow’s Donna succeeds through tremendous odds to fearlessly take us to where we thought no decent human would go, and then exceeds our most frightening expectations. Her Donna is the classic narcissist gone amok. Mama Rose in Gypsy looks like a flower girl by comparison.

The other strong characters in the cast are no less accomplished. Andy Shaw’s Ted delivers a brilliant tour-de-force monologue about children and his feelings about them. Michael E. Manley as the hapless Kevin doesn’t have a chance against his monstrous sister.  He displays all of the character’s confusion, anguish, and damage which still exist, even though they were perpetrated in their childhoods at the hands of his and Donna’s abusive mother. Like so many survivors of child abuse, he welcomes the toxic while eschewing the healthier routes available to him. The young Rachel Berkman plays the teenaged Lottie, already victimized by her mother, perhaps beyond redemption. Her poignant portrayal of the troubled teen was riveting.

Lottie took refuge in books, citing The House of Mirth as a running plot device, and mention was made of her reading Mrs. Dalloway. Clearly, the playwright must have had Edward Albee in mind, since Albee’s A Delicate Balance as well as his Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? easily came to mind. An important play by the esteemed Mr. Beguelin, Harbor shouldn’t be missed.

For further information on this as well as the other featured plays, visit www.quinceproductions.com