Nell (Maryann Plunkett, right), at her home in Ireland, speaks with an Airbnb guest, Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynne Champlin, center), in front of Gabby (Alana Raquel Bowers), an unexpected visitor, in Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones.
Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones is a poignant meditation on grief and betrayal that offers a potentially melodramatic setup but largely avoids obvious broad strokes in favor of quieter pleasures—sharply observed dialogue, characters who defy the labels placed on them, and an exploration of the difficulties and power of empathy. An outstanding ensemble led by the great Maryann Plunkett depicts the international group of women—Irish, English, and American—brought together in rural West Clare, Ireland, through tragic circumstances that threaten to divide them yet end up eliciting a precarious and precious sense of solidarity.
Cheryl-Ann tries the patience of Orla (Clare O’Malley), Nell’s daughter-in-law and a recent widow.
Murray’s play premiered in Dublin in 2023 and toured Ireland in 2025. It arrives at the Irish Rep under the direction of Nicola Murphy Dubey, also the theater’s director of new play development. Though neither director nor cast was involved with the Irish productions, they have achieved a natural, lived-in feeling with the material, no doubt in part from working with dialect coach Barbara Rubin.
When 21-year-old Gabby (Alana Raquel Bowers) shows up unannounced at the West Clare farmhouse that belongs to Nell (Plunkett), she is seven months’ pregnant and declaring that the father is Nell’s recently deceased son, Robin, who was Gabby’s professor at their university in London. Nell, who was a single mother and especially close to her son (she thought), is mired in grief, though Plunkett plays this with restraint, a deep sadness coursing beneath a lightly frazzled surface. It also turns out that Robin’s widow, Orla (Clare O’Malley), will be arriving shortly to spread Robin’s ashes with Nell.
Gabby tells Nell that Robin, Nell’s late son, is the father of her child.
If this weren’t complicated enough, Nell also has an AirBnB guest, Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynne Champlin), a U.S. Midwesterner with an obsessive interest in both birds and Harry Potter; she has no off-switch in shared spaces and is oblivious to social cues. Though her outsized personality is largely played for laughs in the first act, Murray’s script and Champlin’s performance allow Cheryl-Ann to emerge as more than merely a loud, overbearing American—as the play develops, so does Cheryl-Ann, revealed to be a flesh-and-blood person with baggage of her own and a genuine perspective to offer.
Bowers makes Gabby both smart and brave, but also scared and naïve. She was oblivious to the pregnancy for five months, and seems to think that giving the baby up for adoption will be emotionally uncomplicated. Whatever she was expecting from Nell she doesn’t receive at first: “I really don’t think my son would do something like this” is a sentiment Nell offers repeatedly:
Orla and Gabby bond before Orla knows the truth of the situation. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
We weren’t like a normal mother and son, we were extremely close. He wouldn’t have been able to keep something like this from me, and he couldn’t lie to save his life, so …
Eventually Gabby’s truthfulness gets through to Nell, who then becomes determined to keep her away from Orla. The cruelty of the situation for Orla is not only that her late husband was unfaithful, but that she has endured three miscarriages and one emergency C-section at 24 weeks after which the baby died. She is determined to try IVF one last time.
Highly strung, neurotic, and stubborn, O’Malley’s Orla is also incredibly likable. It is almost unbearable to watch the warmth with which she opens up to Gabby, not yet knowing what Gabby represents. But even after the inevitable revelation around the pregnancy, Orla, though struggling, maintains her decency.
Nell and Cheryl-Ann bond over grief.
Robin is entirely absent but looms large; that he turned out not to be the person they thought he was only increases the grief—Nell, for one, must reckon with the idea that she didn’t fully know her son. All of this emotional turmoil unfolds in the modest, cozy sitting area–cum–kitchen of Nell’s house, designed by Tatiana Kahvegian with a porthole window upstage, through which the light of evening and dawn appear (lighting design by Kat C. Zhou).
In the first act, The Loved Ones can seem a bit too much the well-made play, with each revelation or event seen coming well in advance. The cast, though, is so strong as to paper over this predictability. But in the second act, Murray eschews easily guessed-at plot points or blowout confrontations or tidy resolutions in favor of quiet connection. The play’s refusal to veer into melodrama is one of its great strengths, and its power sneaks up on you. (Though the final image is a bit on the nose, Plunkett sells it.)
Life, and sadness, go on—and sometimes the most unlikely companions are the ones who help you through it.
The Loved Ones runs through Aug. 2 at the Irish Repertory Theatre (132 W. 22nd St.). Evening performances are 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets, visit irishrep.org.
Playwright: Erica Murray
Director: Nicola Murphy Dubey
Scenic Design: Tatiana Kahvegian
Costume Design: Orla Long
Lighting Design: Kat C. Zhou
Sound Design: Caroline Eng
