Nell (Maryann Plunkett, so good every expression and movement command watching) has only recently lost son Robin when she’s visited by Gabby (Alana Raquel Bower, another scene-grabber), who introduces herself as very visibly pregnant with Robin’s child, a girl, as it happens.
Nell refuses to believe the news, insisting this is not the kind of escapade Robin, married to Orla (Clare O’Mally, also imperviously strong), would have pursued. Nell substantiates her case by bringing up Robin’s widow, who has repeatedly had trouble giving birth. She insists that’s where his concerns focused.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Gabby, hoping to be allowed to fill a room at Nell’s West Clare farmhouse-rooming house, isn’t easily told no-go—even when the widowed Orla drops in. Same traffic tie-up continues when all three of them are intermittently joined by Nell’s endlessly cheerful West Clare house guest, Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynn Champlin, long yet another adept scene-stealer).
In other words, the set-up promises fireworks, which do and don’t flare, some in expected ways, some quite unexpected, during the entirely credible banter that takes up the charged conversations in Erica Murray’s appealing two-act work.
Robert Morley once defined a play by stipulating that four actors come on stage, sit on a sofa, and chat. Indeed, that’s what happens start to finish on Tatiana Kahvegian’s welcoming set and under Kat C. Chou’s comforting lighting and Caroline Eng’s sound.
Much of the opening talk is between Nell and Gabby. A good deal of it has Nell, who’s expecting a visit from Clare, attempting to push Gabby off the premises, while Cheryl-Ann, eventually learning the big secret, pops in all joviality and dense uptake.
It doesn’t take theater-wise patrons and even those not that theater-wise to see where this is going. It’s hardly a spoiler to suggest—well, not so much suggest as allow—that Orla is going to learn the awful truth despite behaving graciously toward pregnant Gabby, whom she initially takes for no more than one of Nell’s temporary roomers.
Of course, the facts emerge. After all, Murray needs a dramatic first-act cliffhanger, doesn’t she? What else can it be? Nothing else, although—hold the phone—the otherwise thoughtful playwright also tosses in an extra first-act denouement contrivance that’s tidily cleared up and brushed aside when act two begins.
So now Orla is completely aware of what’s afoot, and nosy, happy-go-lucky Cheryl-Ann is in on it all as well. Not to mention that Nell feels obliged to referee all potential conflicts.
Which is where Murray delivers developments that’ll catch all the theater-wise and the not-so-theater-wise mentioned above off guard. She may even confound those prepared to see four women take each other on, possibly even reaching a gnarling hair-pull stage.
But clever playwright that she is, she does anything but march out the clichés. Instead, she graciously offers the opposite, something as rare as lilacs in November. What Murray discloses is a play about four thoughtful, intelligent, understanding, accepting women dealing so close to easily with each other as makes no matter.
Under Nicola Murphy Dubey’s immaculate direction, Bowers, Champlin, O’Malley, and Plunkett are as agreeable a team as are Gabby, Cheryl-Ann, Orla, and Nell. There’s nothing missing start to finish.
If there’s anything to question about the complete pleasure of The Loved Ones, it’s the title. Just who are the specific loved ones? All of them? Nell and Gabby? Mother-in-law Nell and daughter-in-Law Orla? Does Cheryl-Ann even begin to qualify, although she certainly loves herself? Is it the audience coming to love all four characters?
Surely, someone as imaginative as Murray has been at composing this group portrait of four women uniting themselves must be clever enough to come up with a far more evocative title.
The Loved Ones opened June 23, 2026, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through August 2. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
