It’s the holiday season for the Dahl family! The four adult children return to their childhood home with partners in tow. The Dahl traditions include singing carols in harmony at the drop of a hat, but the gathering is anything but harmonious. Old conflicts resurface, new issues battled, and dinner is taking absolutely forever to be served. Will the love the Dahls have for each other be enough to get them through, or will this be their last Christmas together?
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?
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.
2024 | Broadway |
Second Stage Theatre Broadway Production Broadway |
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