Cult of Love, a Second Stage production at the Helen Hayes, is a rueful comedy about a white, upper-middle-class, American family whose charming Christmas celebrations are revealed to cheerfully mask a repressive Christian existence. It arrived tonight, just in time for the holidays.
Leslye Headland opens her modern-day play with the perfect sights and sounds of a classic Christmas Eve as observed by the Dahl household in their Connecticut home. A handsome living room, all mellow wooden rafters, bow windows and comfortable vintage furniture, is elaborately decked out with evergreens and colored lights. While the family’s adorable 60-something patriarch Bill (David Rasche) happily pounds at the piano, his wife Ginny (Mare Winningham) leads their adult children Mark (Zachary Quinto), Evie (Rebecca Henderson) and Diana (Shailene Woodley), who have returned home for the holidays, in an enthusiastic rendition of the folksy “The Cherry-Tree Carol.” Yuletide songs and observances punctuate the action, which concludes on Christmas morning with a family photo.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
A fourth sibling, Johnny (Christopher Sears), arrives later this snowy evening, and potentially is trouble: A note on the Playbill cast page features a who’s-who guide to the story’s ten characters in which Johnny is described as an “addict in recovery.” Actually, Johnny turns out to be an agreeable, guitar-strumming guy, who now understands his urge to shoot heroin stems from a rigid childhood that similarly damaged his siblings.
Cult of Love discloses over 105 sometimes surprisingly funny minutes how the Dahl kids, reared in a tightly cocooned environment of musical, church and exclusive family activities by their too-loving parents, are as adults not dealing so well with the greater world. Midway, the pregnant Diana is revealed to be mentally ill with a religious mania disregarded by her parents and condoned by her ineffectual husband James (Christopher Lowell), an unemployed Episcopal priest.
As outsiders, Johnny’s clear-eyed friend Loren (Barbie Ferreira), Mark’s long-suffering Jewish spouse Rachel (Molly Bernard), and Pippa (Roberta Colindrez), who only recently wed Evie, provide amusingly sardonic and/or incredulous witness to the subtly racist and homophobic behavior displayed by a tight-lipped Ginny, who refuses to acknowledge her children’s issues or sexuality and even how her husband obviously is succumbing to dementia. “I’ve done nothing but love you,” insists Ginny.
While the psychology beneath the story may not be entirely sound, Trip Cullman, the director, effectively illuminates the poignant and ironic qualities that appear throughout Headland’s text. These beautifully sung carols, festive traditions and longstanding jokes (for instance, the lamb roasting in the oven always is pronounced by the Dahls as “lam-buh”) observed since childhood contrast against the grown-up siblings’ personal miseries today. Expect no satisfying resolution for these people, who for the most part remain stuck in the deep grooves of their upbringing.
Excellent performances by a well-meshed ensemble and apt design aspects enhance the entertainment value of the play, which in spite of its often sharp dialogue seems underwritten in places. Designer John Lee Beatty’s setting presents a Christmas card-like coziness at first glance, but later its overly decorated charms subliminally evoke an oppressive feeling. Heather Gilbert’s lighting design eloquently ranges from warm to desolate in its moods. Costume designer Sophia Choi dresses everyone a tad obviously, but like those Playbill notes identifying these people, the clothes provide visual definitions of the characters.
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy observed, and while that is true enough about the dramatic particulars of Cult of Love, somehow there remains a decidedly familiar quality to Headland’s saga of a dysfunctional brood. We’ve seen this sort of homecoming play many times before. But then again, audiences tend to enjoy what they already know, and since plenty of people have experienced miserable holidays at home, the play is likely to strike many notes of recognition among its viewers.
Cult of Love opened December 12, 2024 at the Helen Hayes Theater and runs through February 2, 2025. Tickets and information: 2st.com
