There’s no place like home for a dysfunctional family Christmas as playwright Leslye Headland makes abundantly clear in her gripping, talk-provoking, edge-of-your-seat hilarious Cult Of Love, the long-awaited final installment of her Seven Deadly Plays, the series of vice-based black comedies that put both Headland and IAMA Theatre Company on the map.

It takes a while—and rather a bit of concentration—to put names and identities to Cult Of Love’s ten faces, so here’s a quick primer for those who’d rather not go in knowing nothing at all.

 Lifelong Episcopalians Bill and Virginia “Ginny” Dahl (Tom Amandes and Keliher Walsh) are once again welcoming the adult brood back for Christmas Eve as they have since the oldest of their four kids first flew the coop.

That would be Mark (John Lavelle), who went on to abandon the Episcopal priesthood for law school to his devout parents’ dismay and now finds himself back at home his December 24 alongside wife Rachel (Laila Ayad), who knew from the get-go that by marrying Mark, she’d never again be spending Christmas among her own.

 Lesbian daughter Evie (Melissa Stephens) and wife Pippa (Tina Huang) may live a comfortable life on the former’s seven-figure brand agent income, but Evie still has to deal with parents who are either homophobic or “just don’t know any gay people because they don’t know any people.”

Recovering heroin addict Johnny (Christian Durso) hasn’t arrived yet, but when he does, it will be with a female companion (Sarah Utterback as Lauren), a bit of a surprise to those among his siblings who speculate that he might be gay.

 Last but not least, pregnant youngest daughter Diana (Christine Woods) and and her priest husband Mark (Graham Sibley) have been staying at Bill and Ginny’s for a month now, ostensibly because they needed help with baby George, though that may not be the whole story.

And there you have the “secret club, insular and exclusive” that is the Dahls.

 Unfolding over the course of an evening, a night, and the morning after, Cult Of Love once again reveals playwright Headland’s gift for savagely funny comedy and savagely lacerating drama as tempers flare, secrets are revealed, and no one turns out to be quite who you thought they were.

Headland’s pen takes aim this time at the deadly sin of pride, particularly that of self-proclaimed “Christians” who would counsel praying away the gay, blame a couple’s miscarriage on their godlessness, and refuse antidepressants the better to keep on hearing voices straight from the Big Guy himself.

 That’s not to say that Cult Of Love mocks faith, only those who use the term to pass judgment on others, just one reason Headland’s latest may well be the most discussion-inciting play you’ll see all year.

 Director Annie Tippe manages Cult Of Love’s many overlapping conversations with finesse while eliciting one multi-layered performance after another from a uniformly superb, all-IAMA-member cast, who not only master the play’s multiple shifts from comedy to drama and back, but harmonize to impressive effect under Anthony Lucca’s expert music direction, many of them playing instruments to boot. (One of Headland’s more delicious conceits is that whenever tension arises, the Dahl Family Singers burst into song rather than confront their issues head-on.)

 Cult Of Love looks absolutely terrific on Jeff McLaughlin’s lived-in living-room set, lovingly decorated for Christmas by properties designer Michael O’Hara and lit to perfection by Josh Epstein and Ginerva Lombardo, with Melissa Trn’s just-right costumes and Christopher Moscatiello’s incisive sound design completing the production design mix, and ace fight choreographer Edgar Landa in charge of family scuffles.

Cult Of Love is produced by Tom DeTrinis & Amy Rosoff Davis. Colleen Labella is assistant director. Sarah Dawn Lowry is stage manager and Lexi Sloan and Kimberly Sanchez are assistant stage managers.

Understudies Anisha Adusumilli, Alex Alcheh, Josh Bywater, Anna Rose Hopkins, Jenna Johnson, Sharon Lawrence, Tim Peper, Erin Pineda, and Emily Rowan perform on Thursday June 14.

 I was there back in 2007 for Cinephilia, Leslye Headland’s First Deadly Play (and for three others since then). It’s been over seven long years since The Accidental Blonde took on Envy, but Cult Of Love, arguably Headland’s finest, makes it well worth the wait.

IAMA Theatre Company @ Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village.
www.iamatheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
May 24, 2018
Photos: Dean Cechvala

Tags: IAMA Theatre Company, Leslye Headland, Los Angeles Theater Review