The Approach, Mark O’Rowe’s 2018 play making its local approach, might be considered a trifle, a bagatelle. As such it demonstrates that trifles, bagatelles can boast their own charms, their own genuine appeal, their own dramatic depths.
In a program note, director Conor Bagley makes the case that the 70-minute play has stronger messages to send, saying, “In life, as in The Approach, we are constantly negotiating between what we believe, what we feel, and what we are willing to admit—to others and to ourselves.”
He isn’t incorrect—or is he?—as he strongly suggests that conversation is, well, always negotiation.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Perhaps the answer will vary among audience members as they gather for this entertaining as well as engaging piece, during which four two-sided conversations unravel, the first only partially repeated for a second time before an abrupt blackout. The question arising then is, Why the reprise? Is O’Rowe hinting that conversations are circular, that we always repeat ourselves to each other in hopes of winning the relentlessly continuing negotiation.
So how does The Approach appealingly unfold? Elegantly on a raised circle, set designer Daniel Prosky places a round cocktail table and two chairs before an upstage wall with a door at the right and a door at the right.
When Emma Dean’s lights rise, Dublin friends Cora (Carmen M. Herlihy) and Anna (Danielle Ryan) are seated, coffee mugs before them. As friends, they thrust and parry for enough time to establish they know much about one another. Shortly, they show that agreeable Cora is quite aware that Anna and her sister are estranged. More than that, she’s a willing listener to Anna’s reasons for keeping an uncompromised distance.
Also strikingly, Cora does suggest this about conversational negotiations: “Well, it was, I mean, you do your best to be nice to, or to connect to someone, but after a while you just have to admit to yourself, I mean, don’t you…?
Within seconds, if not minutes, O’Rowe’s mastery of what confidently passes for everyday exchanges among women exclusively is apparent. His assurance themselves obtains unwaveringly through every one of the following conversations.
The initial Cora/Anna pair, having concluded their amiable, if for some time serious chat, exit through one of the upstage doors so that Cora can reenter through the other door, followed by Denise (Kate MacCluggage).
Again, two Dublin women converse like old acquaintances, speaking O’Rowe’s flawless dialogue. At first, they cover idle topics. (Both Anna and Denise admire a bracelet Cora has recently acquired.) The light-hearted chat waning, sisterly friction again comes under exploration. And again, Cora is the polite, understanding listener, ready, as she was with Anna, to express understanding about the side of the animosity now recounted.
When the Cora-Denise duologue ends with similar exits, those arriving to handle (but not drink from) the coffee mugs, are sisters Anna and Denise. They’ve come after not seeing each other for a tense stretch to see if they can resolve their differences. Which (here comes a probable spoiler) they do—and in O’Rowe’s continually believable words.
During their reconciliation, sometimes halting, always convivial. Cora rates a mention, but not much of one. To possible audience disappointment, they merely dismiss her after only one or two remarks.
Yes, indeed, as Cora has been so prominently presented, she—with her notable reticent behavior—will have prompted expectations as to what her friends make of her, make of where she fits into the negotiations. She at least deserves at least a minute or two about what Anna and Denise assume she wants from the negotiation competition. Oh well, it’s not provided and therefore leaves a dramatic lagniappe behind.
What cannot at all be criticized are the performances. It takes no time for, in alphabetical order, Herlihy MacCluggage, and Ryan to convey that these women are old pals. Separately, Herlihy intimates Cora’s lack of complete assurance, MacCluggage spotlights Denise’s knowing self-assurance, and Ryan radiates Anna’s barely contained anger. Incidentally, they do so without leaning into especially heavy Dublin accents.
A last observation: It may be that as The Approach plays on, well-versed theater patrons will slowly begin feeling twinges of another, much older and revered one-act. That would be August Strindberg’s The Stronger, in which two women face off over a tabletop while serious interpersonal negotiations rule. Not a bad allusion.
The Approach opened April 12, 2026, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through May 10. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
