Theater: “Cult of Love” by Leslye Headland @ Second Stage
Apprehensive about a family reunion over the holidays? Count your blessings. It can’t be half as bad as the Dahl family’s Christmas Eve in Leslye Headland’s “Cult of Love,” currently in previews at Second Stage.
The play, which takes place in upper-middle-class Connecticut, looks like the setting for a Hallmark Christmas special. Mom Ginny (Mare Winningham from “Girl from the North Country”) and her husband Bill (David Rasche, the CFO in “Succession”) lead three of their four adult children singing Christmas carols in harmony. It’s getting late, Manhattans are being ladled out of a punch bowl, and everybody’s starving. But Mom refuses to serve dinner until Johnny (Christopher Sears), her youngest—and the family bad boy—arrives. Meanwhile, currents of discontent begins to bubble from beneath the surface.
The older daughter Evie (Rebecca Henderson) and her wife (Roberta Colindrez (from “Fun Home”) are feeling particularly uncomfortable in this happy heterosexual household. The presence of Diana, Evie’s pregnant Evangelical sister (Shailene Woodley in her Broadway debut), and James, her preacher-husband (Christopher Lowell) doesn’t help matters; they soon begin casting aspersions on gay people and Muslims. Eldest brother Adam (Zach Quinto who plays a pretty good banjo) tries to keep the peace: he graduated from Yale Divinity School but then studied law. His anxious second wife (Molly Bernard) is a convert from Judaism.
When Johnny the ne-er-do-well finally does arrive, his guitar and New York-hipster friend Loren (Barbie Ferreira) in tow, nerves really start to fray. Johnny is manic and Loren says she needs a reprieve from the Upper East Side. Loren soon realizes she’s not going to find it at the Dahl’s.
Think of “Cult of Love” as a play written by George S. Kaufman with the absurdity of a work by Ionesco. It’s provocative (the audience was actively clapping for their favorite characters) and lovely to watch at times, especially when the family bonds over holiday carols. Some good ones get sung too—including one of Barack Obama’s favorites (“Children, Go Where I Send Thee.”) But the play also grows serious periodically, particularly on the subjects of love and God.
How can, as some Evangelicals claim, that God is love and then bad-mouth your lesbian sister—to her face? What do Bill and Ginny mean when they say they “love everybody?” And If God says He loves us, can we somehow customize that love to be meaningful to each one of us?
Kudos to Woodley and to Colindrez; the latter’s deadpan expression perfectly telegraphs “wtf am I doing here anyway?” Hope this play succeeds long beyond the holidays because family dysfunction is a year round thing. And as long as it’s not your family’s dysfunction, it can be very entertaining to watch. Opening December 12.