Cult of Love Broadway Reviews

If that setup doesn’t exactly sound funny, there’s a reason. Though “Cult of Love,” like many unhappy family reunion plays, draws big buckets of humor from the toxic brew of religion and repression, those buckets also draw blood.

The play then moves into a protracted endgame; at 100 minutes without an intermission, “Cult of Love” feels, for lack of a better word, long. Part of it, yes, is that, for a while, the escalating revelations about the family dynamics come to make us feel pleasurably trapped. But once the drama comes to a head, there is a long journey toward Christmas morning, one in which serial one-on-one conversations come to feel, eventually, like what had been a sure-footed piece of writing is suddenly dithering toward meaning in the midst of human messiness.

Cult of Love is at least in part about how deeply family ties can become embedded in our identities, even if it happens against our will, and/or outstays its welcome – hence the cult comparison, never over-explicated in the text of the play itself, but a brilliant running metaphor that echoes after the final curtain. Headland’s work as a playwright reflects her broader interest in the social components of religion; this play is the final entry in her Seven Deadly Sins cycle, each work addressing (if sometimes obliquely) a particular transgression. As such, she finds herself in an awkward position: Cult of Love is designated to represent the sin of pride, yet it’s a work to be proud of, nonetheless.

The play doesn’t want to end sourly; at beginning and end it returns to the uniting power of song—the family’s warring members brought together by music. The unity is nice to see, but after all we have seen it also rings false. As formulaic as some of the issues in the play feel (addiction, faith, prejudice, acceptance), the performers are so good—and Cullman such a great conjuror-of-activity as a director—it would be more effective for Cult of Love to stay true to its best, most uncompromising scenes, and deliver an unhappy ending.

A Second Stage Theater production steered like a fast-moving sleigh by director Trip Cullman, Cult Of Love boasts an excellent cast (headed by Zachary Quinto, Mare Winningham, David Rasche and, in an impressive Broadway debut, Star Wars: The Acolyte‘s Rebecca Henderson) that pulls off a familiar scenario with unexpected freshness.

That’s in play here, too, and there are times in Trip Cullman’s very present and very savvy production when it feels like you are actually watching a Judeo-Christian Christmas ghost story with the Baby Jesus or an Old Testament prophet about to make an appearance, or at least some Ghost of Christmas Past showing up with sawdust to sprinkle to promote the belated acceptance of personal difference. The play actually discusses Christianity quite specifically and in a very nuanced way. That’s unusual in Broadway satires, and the play is all the better for having the guts to do so.

If there's an answer, I'm convinced it's here somewhere, buried in this delightfully messy family holiday, waiting to be accessed by the Dahls and all the rest of us held hostage by the promise of our family's enduring love. Grade: B+

Larger themes notwithstanding, Cult of Love is mostly concerned with exploring just such complicated smallness. With an analytic precision that is tempered by sympathy and humor, Headland expertly renders the shifting dynamics and allegiances within the family and the couples: the gang-ups and ambushes, the protective measures and defensive thrusts. And Trip Cullman’s Second Stage production captures that complexity beautifully. It’s there in every inch of John Lee Beatty’s detailed farmhouse set and in Sophia Choi’s perfectly chosen costumes, and especially in the first-rate work of the large cast. Whether singing or sniping or merely stewing, these ten actors don’t hit a false note, and they blend together seamlessly. It's ensemble acting at a shared high level. They do themselves proud.

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.

Helmed by Headland’s go-to collaborator Trip Cullman—who also directed Assistance (inspired by the playwright’s years working for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax), the deliciously bawdy Bachelorette, and the 2016 psychodrama The Layover—Cult of Love couldn’t be better timed: As we’re all agonizing over our own impending holiday family gatherings, there’s nothing more comforting than watching other people’s messed-up relatives tear each other to pieces, especially when there’s a prescription painkiller involved. Now will someone please bring us some figgy pudding?

Director Trip Cullman orchestrates some nice moments throughout, assisted by the sometimes cinematic lighting by Heather Gilbert in quieter night-time tableaux. But Headland’s writing lets him down in some of the more explosive scenes, where characters devolve into shouting obscenities (“Shut the fuck up!”) rather than arguing in ways that deepen our understanding of these characters or their backstories. We’ve seen reunions like this before, in tighter, better-written shows like Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate. All too often here, though, we’re stuck in an in-between world that neither quite grounded in comedy or tragedy — a liminal space like the wardrobe through which you enter Narnia (a magical land that the Dahl family members invoke more than once).

Known for the play-turned-movie Bachelorette and the TV series Russian Doll, Headland can take pride in her smarts, sensitivity, and sharp wit. But she juggles too many hot topics – love, religion, homophobia, sibling rivalry, aging parents, mental illness, addiction, dementia, and denial — without tying up the threads. Director Trip Cullman’s fine-tuned ensemble and the ear-tickling musical interludes are saving graces. A last-minute harmonious quartet nearly makes for a happy ending. Only almost, mind you. But it’s quite the theatrical Hail Mary.

There is no such clear resolution in “Cult of Love,” and no unambiguous message, although Mark gets a near-sermon towards the end that spells out a possible point to the play. If anything, despite the Christmas carols sung from beginning to end, the playwright seems intent on subverting the formula of the Christmas story. But she replaces it with another formula, that of the dysfunctional family drama. This genre at its best can generate shattering moments and fresh insights, and I kept on expecting “Cult of Love” to deliver them. This is thanks to the one undeniable strength of the production: the fine ensemble acting of the cast, six of whose ten members are making their Broadway debuts.

The template of the family reunion drama springs as eternal as the American myths it continues to address. Joining that lineage at the Broadway level is Leslye Headland’s Cult of Love, first performed in 2018 and now making its New York debut at the Hayes Theatre in a starry, captivating production directed by Trip Cullman. With great wit and gently gestured thematic breadth, it tackles the country’s thrall to its righteous, morally dubious origins through the contentious return of a deeply Christian Connecticut household’s offspring on Christmas Eve.