“I’m hiding you,” one of the characters in “The Loved Ones,” the new play at the Irish Rep says to another. As one might an unwanted pregnancy – or as all four characters attempt to with the ghosts that haunt them.
Nell (Maryann Plunkett) is a woman in her 60s living alone on a farm on the western seaboard when a stranger knocks during a storm. The real storm is yet to come.
Gabby (Alana Raquel Bowers) claims she is carrying the child of Nell’s married son. The other complication is that the son died unexpectedly exactly six months before, and his wife is due momentarily to commemorate that anniversary.
Orla (Clare O’Malley) is enraged that her husband, Robin, is gone and she will never have the child she spent more than a decade trying to conceive.
Gabby is 22 and wants no part of the child conceived during a feckless affair with her former college professor. He also was Nell’s only child.
Nell, blindsided, is doing her diplomatic best to keep these two women apart and disaster at bay.
“No rooms at the inn, literally,” Gabby says, meaning she must stay with Nell. And there’s another unexpected guest, Cheryl-Ann, an Airbnb booking made by accident.
Her verbal diarrhea includes a live commentary, effectively rating her host, who she informs, beaming, “I like to provide very detailed reviews”.
Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynne Champlin) is overbearing, meddling, and great fun. She provides the comedy in in the first half, which is mostly tense and tragic. The mood lightens in the second half. Meanwhile, Cheryl-Ann reveals her darkness and is redeemed from being a caricature of a clueless American.
Each of the characters has something to say that helps the other characters. That’s a bit formulaic, but it’s well done and therefore satisfying. Memorable lines include Orla’s: “[W]e spend all our 20s trying not to get pregnant and then most of our 30s desperately trying to do the exact opposite.”
Some have faulted the play for the amount of time the women spend talking about a man, but since the man in question is all that they have in common, that’s natural.
Arguably, this is a feminist play in that the women find common cause despite their conflicting interest in a man (whether alive or through his legacy). And they collectively shake off the patriarchal narrative that would shame them.
“Honestly, why can’t men handle real life? It pisses me off!” Orla says before events will open her eyes to how close to home that is.
These women are dealing with the reality of Robin’s aftermath. We’re not sure how things will work out as the play ends, but we are left confident that they will find a way to handle what comes, since escape is not an option.
Plunkett, an accomplished Tony-winning performer, grounds the play as an earthy individual used to just getting on with it.
The Rep’s production is at least the second to cast Gabby as black, although the character is not specified as black. Certainly, that would add to the shock value, in this setting. Liscannor, just south of the Cliffs of Moher in Co. Clare has a population of 135, according to the latest Irish census. However, it becomes a bit confusing for the audience as the play progresses without a single allusion to the characters being of different races.
Nicola Murphy Dubey directs the action with dramatic pacing and there are some nice touches where flickering lights seem to convey Nell’s repressed emotions. However, overlooked details occasionally detract from one believing what’s happening on stage, such as a character who forgets to lace up her boots before hillwalking or another who fills a hot water bottle without waiting for the kettle to boil.
Still, there’s plenty of simmering entertainment here. Limerick-born playwright Erica Murray ends the play by evoking a traditional, spiritual belief in Ireland, a symbol particular to the play, but also universal. This viewer found it deeply moving.
“The Loved Ones,” by Erica Murray, directed by Nicola Murphy Dubey, runs at The Irish Repertory Theatre until August 2. Tickets for the two-hour show at https://irishrep.org/.
