We are a competitive species. It’s human nature. We see it on social media with posts featuring the most flattering self-images that challenge the truth. Women, especially, tend to make themselves look prettier, thinner and happier than they really are. Mark O’Rowe explores that basic behavior in nimble fashion with his deceptively simple play The Approach.
It features three women in Dublin, all longtime friends, who re-connect at various times over cups of tea or coffee simply to get caught up on each other. The 70-minute one act is a subtle and incisive character study about the all too human need to disguise our less than perfect lives.
On the surface, the play could be perceived as mundane. There is no action beyond sitting and chatting. There’s no big reveal; and even as the friends talk about life-altering events, they’re expressed with acceptance and little emotion. And yet, by play’s end, we will come to see the depth of feeling hidden beneath the lies, and the heartbreaking consequences that emerge when truth is too often denied.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
It takes a great deal of skill to pull off a work that’s as quietly understated as this. The women, interacting in pairs, mostly delve in circular small talk. In lesser hands, the conceit would be a total bore, but the Irish Rep’s minimalist production, directed by Conor Bagley keeps us hooked by planting little clues that allow us to seize on inconsistencies exposing the desperation and lengths the women go to hide their unhappiness.
Best of all is the trio of first rate actors who sell the premise with muted finesse. The performances are beautifully calibrated as each of them slowly reveals interior lives at odds with the cheerful demeanor they exhibit.
We first meet Cora (Carmen M. Herlihy) and Anna (Danielle Ryan) who get on with the usual topics: diet, shopping, significant others, while recounting old wounds and slights. It all seems innocuous until they hit on a subject that strikes a nerve. The mention of an old friend for example who committed suicide is freighted with unspoken weight.
Cora: If you want my help, then give me some indication you want it, you know?…You do your best to be nice to, or to connect to someone, but after a while you just kind of admit to yourself, I mean don’t you…?
Anna: No, you do.
Cora: …that you’re wasting your time, you know?
There’s a long pause after that exchange and then they awkwardly move on to another topic.
The next meeting features Cora and Anna’s sister, Denise (Kate MacCluggage). We learn that the sisters have been estranged ever since Anna accused Denise of stealing her boyfriend. It’s later discovered that their recollections and reactions were not entirely honest. The truth is eventually borne out when the two sisters meet in the third scene and the cracks in their stories become more apparent.
This is a play that’s more about what’s not said than anything you hear. And for that reason, The Approach will not be everyone’s cup of tea. It requires the audience to do some delicate detective work in order to decipher its intended meaning. Don’t expect any revelations. It’s a puzzle that some will find not worth the effort to solve. For those who do make the effort, there is a universal message buried within its disjointed dialogue. All those disappointments we try so hard to conceal – loneliness, insecurity, jealousy – might not be so painful if only we could make the effort to truly connect to someone, as Cora unwittingly remarks.
The Approach opened April 12, 2026, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through May 10. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
