Cult of Love (2024) (Broadway)

I had no expectations for Cult of Love, a stressful Christmas eve family drama. I had no idea what it was about. I got this ticket on Culture Pass simply because I saw Shailene Woodley and Zachary Quinto were in it. Little did I know the rest of the cast were also very good and some recognizable: Mare Winningham, David Rasche from Succession, and Barbie Ferreira from Euphoria. And I was very pleasantly surprised at the very engaging play that also features a number of songs, Christmas carols sung by the cast in four-part harmony as well as played on instruments played on stage by the actors (banjo, drums, piano, tambourine, etc.). The cast are not all known for singing but they sing valiantly in harmony. They're a convincing dysfunctional family who learned to sing as kids in church. The plot unfolds slowly and deliberately, secrets withheld until they're released at a time to land most dramatically on the audience. There are themes of mental illness, religiosity, drug addiction, bigotry and family. It deals with heavy themes with some levity.The playwright Leslye Headland has written a cycle of plays about the Seven Deadly Sins; this one is about pride. I don't think it's obvious, not necessarily the most prominent theme. But pride in a religious sense is about putting oneself above God. And I guess they all kind of do that, not least the would-be prophet. But I think in another sense, the four children have a pride represented by a burden they feel to their family; and they each feel like they must be the bigger person to take it upon themselves because the other kids are negligent. It's not exactly pride but it blinds them nonetheless from having relationships with their siblings. And we have to mention the casting of Shailene Woodley, the biggest star in the cast, who has a reputation that precedes her that she kind of leans into by playing this character. She is a would-be cult leader who is mentally ill but presents as an ultra-religious nutjob who is compelled to say awful things to her family. They're stunning zingers that either silence the audience or induce audible gasps. But don't we love to be shocked. 

McNeal (2024) (Broadway)

In Robert Downey Jr.'s Broadway debut, he plays a writer using AI to write his new book. There's a confusing meta plot where he may be writing the play that we're watching unfold before our eyes. It's fine but the gimmick about AI isn't really saying anything new or meaningful about AI. And I bet AI technology improves so much over the next couple years that this will quickly feel outdated. And it's just kind of boring. I did fall asleep a bit in the scene at the agent's office. It's really unfortunate because I like Andrea Martin a lot. She's so funny but I missed half her scene and don't know if she landed any jokes.

There is a plot in here that is very similar to The Wife. McNeal wins the Nobel Prize in literature but he might have sold his wife's writing as his own. Or he might've adapted her story into his own, and does that make it his? There's some gender politics thrown in there. And much to everyone's surprise, he says multiple times that he admires Harvey Weinstein. Just wasn't on my bingo card this year. The character though is very much Iron Man. Robert Down Jr basically plays the same character, and I bet that's why he was cast. He's a macho man who is successful and brazen, fast-talking, generally dismissive of other people--not exactly likeable but on some level respectable? That plays out in real time to as his profiler from the newspaper starts our repulsed but is slowly converted to write a piece about him that's just about as good as it was going to get based on the garbage he's spewing at her.

The set was pretty cool. The sets at Lincoln Center Theater are always handsomely made. It makes use of screens to display the AI. There are some deepfakes that don't really add anything to the story.