It’s that time of year for the Dahls, the close-knit Christian family at the center of Leslye Headland’s bleak and biting new play Cult of Love. Christmas is their favorite holiday, an occasion for the four adult children (plus their spouses) to convene at the elder Dahls’ house and imbibe on batch Manhattans, gorge on dense confectionaries, stow away extra figgy pudding and sing carols exalting their Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
No matter that a handful of the Dahls are having a crisis of faith, that one might be losing their memory, that another is in active recovery from drug addiction and a third might be buckling under the weight of their mental health issues. The Dahls, in service of their own self-image, prefer to lie and deny.
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Produced by Second Stage and now at The Helen Hayes theater in New York, Cult of Love (directed by Headland’s longtime collaborator Trip Cullman) observes the Dahls as they celebrate a Christmas threatened by buried secrets and unacknowledged truths. The production completes the Seven Deadly Plays by Headland (Russian Doll, The Acolyte), which she began writing in 2006 with the IAMA Theater Company in Los Angeles. The writing is sharp in considering the shape pride takes within a deeply devoted family, filled with cutting observations about religious hubris and finely timed jokes about what this sin, considered the first and most deadly, breeds.
The star-studded cast, which includes Broadway debuts by Shailene Woodley and Barbie Ferreira, deliver committed performances that demonstrate a sincere relationship to the material. Zachary Quinto is here, too, as is Rebecca Henderson from The Acolyte and Fun Home star Roberta Colindrez, all in fine form. But the narrative itself can be a mixed bag, an ambitious text with some moments of true profundity and others still reaching for meaning.
Cult of Love opens with one of the Dahls’ preferred activities: singing carols. Like the family at the center of Joshua Oppenheimer’s delightfully strange apocalyptic musical The End, the Dahls find a more honest register when singing. The carols, a mix of familiar Christian holiday tunes deftly supervised by Jacinth Greywoode, becomes a portal through which we can better see their desires for mutual understanding.
Bill (David Rasche), the patriarch, plays the “The Cherry-Tree Carol” at the piano and is soon joined by his wife Ginny (an excellent Marie Winningham). The children follow. While Evie (Rebecca Henderson), the eldest Dahl daughter, belts with her mother, her wife Pippa (Roberta Colindrez) stays silent. Mark (Zachary Quinto), the eldest Dahl son, and his wife Rachel (Younger’s Molly Bernard) participate too. As does James, Diana’s husband (Christopher Lowell). But it’s Diana (Shailene Woodley), the youngest Dahl daughter, pregnant with her second child, who steals the show with her melodic voice.
When the song ends, so too does the congeniality. The Dahls devolve into a grumbling mass, lodging bitter complaints about the youngest son Johnny (Christopher Sears, in top form) who, as usual, is late. Ginny doesn’t want to start dinner without him, which forces the other siblings and their spouses to stave off hunger with more cookies and wine.
As the group waits for Johnny, threads of various secrets reveal themselves; like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins in Appropriate, Headland explores how secrets warp reality and keep families in distressing prisons of their own making. Cult of Love also recalls Stephen Karam’s play and later film The Humans, which recasts a family holiday gathering (this one Thanksgiving) as a psychological thriller.
All of these works explore reunions as a fraught encounter between past wounds, present realities and future desires. But Headland’s play distinguishes itself from the others by investigating these confrontations alongside pride: How does this sin, defined by blinding self-absorption and lack of humility, distort the Dahls’ love?
The answer is more searching than certain. Cult of Love, which feels like the more impressionistic Appropriate, confidently builds schematic portraits of the Dahls. It’s not concerned with establishing an obvious narrative thread. Revelations are found within interactions between characters who end up in small configurations — pairs or trios — to whisper about what’s really going on. All of the drama in this skillfully paced 100-minute play takes place in Ginny and Bill’s Connecticut farmhouse. The cozy scenic design by John Lee Beatty — a chimney lined with colorful stockings, rustic themed furniture and wood paneled walls — and lighting design by Heather Gilbert gently steer us through the moods of Christmas Eve.
Surrounded by reminders of childhood, the Dahls feud about the present in a futile attempt to preserve a future together. Rachel wants her family to acknowledge the cruel homophobia directed at her and her wife Pippa. The two recently got married in a wedding barely attended by the Dahls, and plan to start a family. Mark, whose lapse of faith drew him to the law, is struggling in his marriage (Evie is rightly unhappy) and career (he recently clerked for Justice Roberts but isn’t sure what’s next). Both worry about their father, who’s exhibiting signs of dementia, and Diana, whose mental health issues have been routinely ignored by their parents. Her husband James also seems on edge, so we know there are secrets there, too.
With so many characters on stage, Headland must tend to an array of themes: homophobia, religious doubt, aging parents, mental health and even drug addiction. It’s no small feat that each character is distinctly drawn and that audiences can keep up with the rhythm and speed of the rapid, overlapping dialogue. Still, Headland handles some threads with more finesse than others.
Those shortchanged include Johnny and Loren (Barbie Ferreira), a friend from his recovery program. Sears does an excellent job with his role, capturing Johnny’s frenetic desperation to remain afloat in the clan’s fetid storm, but this critic, at least, wanted more for this character. Ferreira struggles a bit more to find the depth in her role; her character comes off as merely a cipher, a stand-in for an audience similarly positioned as outsiders.
The other supporting characters in the Dahl show could have benefited from more shading as well. Colindrez flexes her comedic chops and makes the most of her time on stage but Pippa, like Bernard’s Rachel, remains a relatively opaque figure.
Cult of Love is at its best when focused on Ginny, Mark, Evie and Diana, who represent different forms of pride. Through them, the playwright, who was raised in a similarly devoted home, wrestles with charged questions about faith and hubris.
Ginny catastrophizes any comments about her mothering, insisting that her love is absolution. Winningham’s micro-expressions — especially her whimpering lips at any hint of criticism — are painful in their accuracy. Mark and Evie share similar issues, in that both have intellectually turned away from religion but can’t complete the emotional severance. Diana, whose religious psychosis worsens throughout the play, is one of the more tragic characters, and Woodley is pitch perfect in a role that requires balancing the comedy with these darker undertones.
Headland’s efforts with these characters can be messy at times, but for this critic, who grew up in similar Christian conditions, the results are undoubtedly electrifying. With scary precision, the playwright captures the delusion that roots itself in families who use faith to control. She shows how an aversion to doubt and rejection of questions that might threaten sanctity narrows a family’s field of vision, making it harder to see the tragedy unfolding around them.
Venue: The Helen Hayes, New York
Cast: Molly Bernard, Roberta Colindrez, Barbie Ferreira, Rebecca Henderson, Christopher Lowell, Zachary Quinto, David Rasche, Christopher Sears, Mare Winningham, Shailene Woodley
Director: Trip Cullman
Playwright: Leslye Headland
Scenic designer: John Lee Beatty
Costume designer: Sophia Choi
Lighting designer: Heather Gilbert
Sound designer: Darron L West
Presented by 2ndStage, in association with Berkley Repertory Theatre
