“Cult of Love” begins with a tableau so near good that one can see it shattering even earlier than it occurs.

The Dahl household have come collectively to rejoice Christmas, with three of the household’s 4 grown kids and their spouses gathered on the night of the twenty fourth, enjoying devices and singing a liturgical carol, hitting each concord good. It’s a Dahl’s home, all proper: The set (courtesy of scenic designer John Lee Beatty) falls simply on the suitable aspect of excellent style when it comes to its extravagant evocation of the Christmas spirit, with strings of lights whose twinkle can come to look like an oppressive glare. 

However that comes later: As we start, the assembled events appear, primarily, in good cheer, as we’re left to research them as they carry out their pretty prolonged opening quantity. (Journey Cullman, who directed the present at Berkeley Repertory Theatre earlier this yr, directs as soon as extra.) However because the minutes move, a number of fissures appear evident. We haven’t but actually met these characters, however we will inform — can’t we? — that Mark (Zachary Quinto) is throwing himself into the quantity as if evading one thing that can spring again into his consciousness when the music ends. In the meantime, Pippa (Roberta Colindrez) appears pained by her standing as an outsider to the household, casting as she does a sarcastic side-eye to all of it, whilst her spouse Evie (Rebecca Henderson), a Dahl by delivery, can’t assist however get down. And doesn’t the lady we’ll come to know as little sister Diana (Shailene Woodley) appear unusually, properly, spirited as she sings?

The intelligent factor of “Cult of Love,” Leslye Headland’s play first carried out in 2018 and newly on Broadway at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater, is its subversion of a sure holiday-season trope. Whereas each single Dahl has one thing to get off of his or her chest, they’re not gathered there for one particular or one last Christmas. Certainly, they’re all going by the motions, summoned by the pious matriarch Ginny (a superb Mare Winningham) to carry out the vacation rituals they’ve been performing out since childhood. Raised in an unremittingly strict, buttoned-up family, the 4 Dahl offspring should restage their childhood, yr after yr, as grown-ups.

That relatable conceit buoys this comedy of manners — for so long as it stays a comedy of manners. The household has a practiced manner of speaking across the issues that basically matter, from Evie and Pippa’s relationship (grudgingly accepted, it appears at first, by the extra conservative of the Dahls) to the ever-diminishing reminiscence of growing old dad Invoice (David Rasche) to no matter it’s that’s occurring with Diana, who’s introduced her Episcopal priest husband (Christopher Lowell) and her toddler little one to Mother and Dad’s to remain indefinitely within the midst of a seeming mental-health disaster. Throw into the combination the absent Johnny (performed, when he arrives, by Christopher Sears), whose restoration from heroin dependancy permits his siblings to solid him because the black sheep, shielding Mark and Evie from having to reckon with their very own respective points, and also you’ve acquired a splendidly intriguing set-up. The truth that, between the Dahl dad and mom, Invoice can not and Ginny is not going to have interaction with their kids’s manifold points solely guarantees to push us additional into the strife one household experiences the 364 days of the yr that there aren’t presents underneath the tree.

Sadly, “Cult of Love” defaults first to at least one methodology of storytelling, then one other — and neither of them are as fleet because the present’s first hour, which clicks alongside, establishing relationships in a manner that’s so rigorously written as to look easy. (Of the solid members not but talked about, Molly Bernard is phenomenal as Mark’s spouse Rachel, more and more resentful of all that she gave up with a purpose to try and weave her manner into this impossibly close-knit household.) First, the present’s barnburner opening quantity is adopted by a really, very, very lengthy group efficiency on the present’s midpoint after prodigal son Johnny’s arrival. The quantity fails to say important new issues. And, in a surprisingly misjudged little bit of staging, it strands Johnny’s plus-one, Loren (“Euphoria’s” Barbie Ferreira, who does very properly all through regardless of her awkward introduction) to idly grin and clap because the Dahls carry out, endlessly. We get it: It’s an surroundings that’s hostile to outsiders. After the seventh or eighth verse, although, that group of outsiders whom the household received’t let in involves really feel just like the viewers, too. 

The play then strikes right into a protracted endgame; at 100 minutes with out an intermission, “Cult of Love” feels, for lack of a greater phrase, lengthy. A part of it, sure, is that, for some time, the escalating revelations in regards to the household dynamics come to make us really feel pleasurably trapped. However as soon as the drama involves a head, there’s a lengthy journey towards Christmas morning, one by which serial one-on-one conversations come to really feel, finally, like what had been a sure-footed piece of writing is immediately dithering towards that means within the midst of human messiness. 

However what a multitude it’s. Among the many siblings, Woodley, a star of movie and TV (“Ferrari,” “Massive Little Lies”) acquits herself properly, however, fortunately for her as a performer, she will get to scream out her ache as her sickness turns into clear, and he or she does so with a transparent sense of what Diana, determining her future as a pregnant younger mom with a psychological sickness she refuses to acknowledge, is struggling by. Woodley provides her the winsome charisma, and the bottomless want, that makes you perceive how she ended up on the middle of this household’s psychic life. Sears is a hoot as a really recognizable kind, the charismatic addict attempting to muscle his manner by by making folks snicker, though (to his and Headland’s credit score) the humor grows extra painful because the present goes on. And Winningham and Rasche each play a showy, gaudy form of religious restraint — they will’t assist however name consideration to how little they name consideration to themselves, you see. 

Quinto and Henderson, by comparability, wrestle barely. In Henderson’s case, enjoying the Dahl sister who (precisely sufficient) perceives homophobia round each nook, there’s a query of elevation. Within the present’s early going, she declares “I hate everybody right here,” and he or she spends virtually your entire second half of the present saying that she’s imminently going to depart the home — no, however for actual this time, and he or she received’t be coming again. (She received’t!) There’s virtually nowhere for her to go — not even the AirBNB to which she retains idly threatening to decamp — and virtually no evolution for her to expertise. The “virtually” right here is as a result of her vibing out to music within the present’s opening quantity, opposite to her personal sense of eager to dodge her household and her spouse’s growing discomfort, opens up intriguing avenues for the place the character may need gone.

And Quinto has to shoulder the present’s closing conversations, ones by which Mark, within the midst of a decades-long disaster of religion — we’ve been advised he studied to turn out to be a priest, earlier than dropping out and pursuing a profession within the regulation — has to shut out the present by giving a conclusive sense of what all of it means. His dialog with Ferreira’s Loren, herself a tablet addict invited by her Narcotics Nameless sponsor, Johnny, options one pretty callback to a second within the play that introduced a tear to my eye; it additionally options a number of the present’s haziest and loosest writing. 

There’s a lot good and sharp in “Cult of Love” — its remedy of grown siblings reckoning with their dad and mom, its tactical observations about how in-laws match right into a household unit — that its slack moments rankle considerably. Pretty dully written condemnations that Quinto’s and Henderson’s characters toss out in opposition to non secular religion play now as straightforward applause strains; I want they had been sharper, as a result of this present has a lot going for it. However give “Cult of Love” this a lot: It leaves the viewers on a excessive. Its central musical quantity falls flat, however when the siblings elevate their voices in a concord they can not assist however discover, regardless of their disjunction, a whole play’s price of missed alternatives for character improvement wash away. Name it, maybe, the spirit of Christmas — or simply the will to forgive a flawed present with an amazing deal working in its favor.