Leslye Headland’s incisive, hilarious and emotionally piercing Christmas cookie of a play, Cult of Love boasts the best ensemble currently on Broadway. It’s also a wholly relatable theatrical experience, just in time for anyone feeling trepidation about attending familial holiday gatherings.
Ginny Dahl (the always excellent Mare Winningham) is the loving matriarch who, in a hot second, can also be frighteningly controlling and manipulative. Each year at Christmas she expects (demands) that her four children journey home for the holidays (despite not seeing most of them throughout the year) where they converge, eat figgy pudding and sing many a merry carol. They’re a very musical group which adds layers to the complex relationships. Alas, this particular year, old wounds will be torn open and deep-seated grudges, jealousies and hidden secrets exposed. It’s just a gay old time! Where gays aren’t really welcome.
The family patriarch, Bill (David Rasche) is in a rather melancholy mood and is also losing his memory, which Ginny won’t acknowledge. Actually, Ginny refuses to admit to most things she finds distasteful including her daughter’s lesbianism and her son’s drug problem.
The most obliging sib, the elder son, Mark (Zachary Quinto, in one of his best stage performances to date) arrives with his estranged wife Rachel (Molly Bernard, captivating) and they must soon deal with his judgy Christian fundamentalist sister Diana (Shailene Woodley) and her feckless husband, James (Christopher Lowell). Although there is more going on here than devoutness.
The loud, gay family black sheep Evie (Rebecca Henderson, a standout among standouts) brings along her new and secretly pregnant wife, Pippa (flawlessly acerbic Roberta Colindrez).
And they all await the perpetually late fuck-up son Johnny (Christopher Sears, joy and sorrow perfectly combined), who is the apple of Ginny’s eyes. Johnny has Loren (Barbie Ferreira) in tow, who everyone assumes is his girlfriend. And she thought her family was dysfunctional!
Watching these characters interact had me feeling elated as an audience member since the drama felt so real yet cathartic. These siblings have been so indoctrinated into a kind of behavior that had become rote from years of drilling. Ginny’s expectations are that you show up, sing, eat, enjoy yourself, dammit, and then take part in the annual family photo. Then you can go back to whatever your life is…until next year. And everyone usually capitulates. But this particular year, some sibs, and sig others, start to question things from the homophobia allowed to run rampant to their own relationship to God and faith, to just how their upbringing has arrested their development in all the ways that matter.
Director extraordinaire Trip Cullman balances the tricky blend of heavy drama (almost horror) with satiric, sometimes absurd comedy so well that some moments are both painful to watch and ridiculously entertaining!
Credit: Joan Marcus
Headland is a celebrated screenwriter (Bachelorette) and the co-creator or Netflix’s Russian Doll. Cult of Love marks the seventh play in her Seven Deadly Sins cycle: Pride. And it’s interesting to ponder that particular “sin,” in regard to the characters, once the play has ended.
The siblings in Cult of Love are trying to break their own cycle—one it’s taken a lifetime to have woven together. When the quartet sing (and brilliantly harmonize) the traditional folk song, “Oh Shenandoah,” late in the play, it’s both blissfully rousing and chillingly haunting.
Treat yourself to this wonderful play this holiday season.
Second Stage’s production of Cult of Love performs through Feb. 2, 2024 at the Helen Hayes Theater. Tickets
