HOLIDAY PUNCH

"Cult of Love" on. Broadway and "No President" at the Skirball.

- HELEN SHAW

In Leslye Headland's drama, a family's attempts at harmony fall flat.

The first image of Leslye Headland's family drama, "Cult of Love," on Broadway at the Hayes, looks like a Christmas card. Behind a gauzy scrim, most members of the ten-person cast pose in festive symmetry, carefully arranged around a living room glowing with a thousand holiday lights. We consider this tableau for a moment, before the scrim rises and the action begins. The prefatory pause gives the audience a chance to applaud a starry ensemble. It also signals that what we're about to see is glossy and a little false.

We're in the seemingly blissful home of an intensely Christian family, the Dahls, and the elders-Ginny (Mare Winning-ham, Tony-nominated in 2022 for "Girl from the North Country") and her mentally deteriorating husband, Bill (David Rasche, who played a consigliere on "Succession") have summoned their adult children home for the holiday. The family members regularly break into impressively harmonized, Osmond-family-level carol arrangements that they've clearly been singing together forever. Some of the siblings' spouses might roll their eyes, but they often join in, shaking a maraca here, playing a washboard there.