Love, Loss, and Shame
REVIEW by ANTHONY CHASE
As the lights come up on The Loved Ones by Erica Murray at Irish Classical Theatre Company, we find ourselves dropped abruptly into the center of a scene in progress. A young English woman in an advanced state of pregnancy is facing an older Irish woman at her modest home in rural County Clare, Ireland. We quickly learn that these women have never met before and that the younger woman, Gabby, played by Ember Tate-Steele, has arrived unexpectedly with some unsettling news for Nell, played by Eileen Dugan.
It’s a very Amy Herzog beginning, as when Leo arrives at his grandmother’s apartment in the middle of the night in 4000 Miles, and as with Herzog, we are about to embark on a character-driven narrative, exploring family dynamics, intergenerational relationships, lies told, and secrets hidden.
Gabby’s news is that she is seven months pregnant by Nell’s middle-aged son, Robin, who died abruptly, just six months ago. Robin was her professor at university. Nell has never heard of this girl, and is, at first, doubtful of her story. She doesn’t have much time to contemplate the subtleties, however, because she is expecting another guest. Orlah, her son’s bereaved widow, is due to arrive at any second with his ashes. To make matters worse, Nell runs an Airbnb and forgot to block out this weekend. And so, rather than spending time alone with a daughter-in-law with whom she has never really gotten along, she is entertaining strangers, Gabby and another guest.
Nell’s weekend lodger is Cheryl-Ann, a brash and overly friendly American tourist, played by Smirna Mercedes. Cheryl-Ann is an avid birder, ostensibly in Ireland in hopes of seeing a cormorant, puffin, or razorbill or two, but really because she is lonely, craves human connection, and travel’s the world in its pursuit.
In this sea of spoilers (the publicity for this play tells only that, “When an unexpected guest arrives, weekend plans take a surprising turn, revealing the power of human connection in the face of adversity) it is useful to know that Orla knows nothing about Gabby, much less that her late husband has fathered a child with her. Moreover, Orla has endured fertility issues and four miscarriages and desperately wants a child.
If that set up suggests a Hallmark ending to this heartbreaking tale of love and loss, you’d be right. We are headed for a Hallmark ending, but not the one that everyone expects. Murray knows how to tug a heartstring, but she also knows restraint and trusts her audience to be two steps ahead of the action. She uses our compulsion to anticipate narrative as a way to send us down garden paths of misdirection.
Murray also has a wickedly astute sense of humor that she deploys to zero in on human failings in her sharp and clever dialogue. Her barbs at the human condition are most delightful when characters make sardonic observations about themselves. Nell is fully aware that she is emotionally disconnected. Orla fully understands she is kind of a horror. Cheryl-Ann knows that people think she a tiresome loon. Gabby realizes that she is on autopilot, and probably making one bad decision after another.
That Murray can find levity in all this convoluted pain is at the heart of her writing. The conflicting situations of these characters will lead to collisions. Some of these are worthy of a nighttime television soap, except that while the playwright may flirt with predictable destinations, she never actually takes us there.
The casting of this production and the sensitive direction by Kyle LoConti further allow the material to veer away from cliché and into fully dimensioned life. I suspect that I would have found the Cheryl-Ann character to be a cheap and grotesque caricature in the Dublin production, the sort of stupid American that populates countless European comedies. LoConti has cast Puerto Rican Mercedes in the role and her deft portrayal of the character is pure American, but Latin. Her frustrated mutterings in Spanish reveal that she finds her hosts in Ireland to be as confusing as they find her. Moreover, she is a genuinely loving person. Mercedes lands the character’s laughs with seemingly effortless good cheer, all the while softening us up for her unexpectedly layered motivations, and while serving as a kind of sounding board or Greek chorus for the other characters.
Having seen Eileen Dugan in numerous plays over many years, I can’t say that she has grown as an actor, exactly, because she was always sublime. I remember her in plays like Noises Off and Table Manners, and Da, back in the 1980s. In Duet for One, opposite Chris O’Neill in 1988. In Juno and the Paycock with Anne Gayley in 1988. As Laura in Glass Menagerie with Anne Gayley back in 1989. I can’t recall how many times she played Anne Gayley’s daughter. Now, of course, over 30 years later, having gone from juvenile, to leading lady, to Grand Dame, she is playing the kind of roles that formerly went to Anne Gayley. They called Dugan the “Goddess of the Golden Knights,” when she was the voice for the Las Vegas hockey team; she’d been hired because the casting director was looking for someone who could do a “Game of Throne-sy -- Dame Judi Dench kind of voice.” Indeed, Dugan is a Judi Dench kind of actor. With this performance, she, once again, affirms her status as one of Buffalo’s foremost and most distinguished actors.
Nell is stubborn, cryptic, and hardened yet vulnerable. Her every interaction with the other characters in this play is a negotiation wherein she hides some of her true thoughts and feelings. Dugan often plays this to comic effect, while conveying the complexities of the woman with clarity and assurance. When she listens, we can see questions transmit across her brow. Dugan portrays Nell as a woman who only suffers fools for reasons of practicality, and when that ruse is no longer practical, stand back, an explosion will ensue. Be prepared for a big one at the end of Act One.
Rebecca Elkin is one of those actors who people like to underestimate, maybe because she is the daughter of Buffalo theater legend Saul Elkin. So yes, she has played nearly a dozen leading roles at Shakespeare in Delaware Park, founded by her father, including Juliet, Desdemona, Ophelia, and Cordelia, the latter opposite her father’s Lear and Eileen Dugan’s Goneril. But to assume mere family connection is to undervalue the nuance and eloquence of those wonderful performances. Moreover, one of my most vivid theater memories of any kind features Rebecca Elkin, not in Shakespeare at all, but in Douglas Carter Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed, at Buffalo United Artists.
Her performance of the famed Act One “Screecher monologue” from that play, in which her character recounted the experience of returning home to visit her mother was unforgettable. “I can’t win here,” said Ellen, before revealing that she probably shouldn’t have shown up at 3 a.m. without warning; and she probably should have remembered to bring cab fare; and she probably shouldn’t have broken a window to get in when she realized that she’d forgotten her key.
Elkin’s entirely naturalistic performance of the speech, alternately building momentum and stopping herself short, earnestly asking for the audience’s sympathy while unwittingly turning them against herself, as the laughter built and built, was perfection.
In that play, Elkin was able to demonstrate her character’s impulsive nature and the dysfunctional family dynamics at play without ever seeming to “act” at all. Orla has a great deal in common with Ellen in terms of a self-concept at odds with the way the world perceives her. Listen for details of the incident at work that has resulted in therapy sessions. Then listen to how willingly and truthfully Orla exposes her soul to her therapist, or not. The contradictions are both horrifying and hilarious. Elkin can walk that road, which becomes more treacherous when Orla is faced with an authentic crisis of reality and self-worth.
Gabby, as played by talented Ember Tate-Steele, is a bright and capable young woman, thrown off balance and into a sense of bewilderment by her unexpected pregnancy and by having to face the consequences of a relationship that had a dynamic of unequal power she was too inexperienced to comprehend. Tate-Steele wears her character’s lack of self-awareness as if it were foolishness, while the older women around her recognize true innocence. This brings us to a central and vital theme of The Loved Ones – shame.
While the play is given the climactic structure of the Well-Made Play, to be fair, playwrights from Henrik Ibsen to Lillian Hellman to Arthur Miller to Tennessee Williams use this same structure. It is the dose of complicated reality that makes good plays, in this case, Murray obliges us to acknowledge that shame shapes an enormous amount of human interaction. There is shame aplenty to go around in this play, with Gabby’s unexpected pregnancy merely the first on the list.
The idea that Murray proffers with this play is that shame is often a source of undeserved pain and the inappropriate reaction to life’s vicissitudes, especially for women. Moreover, she suggests, love is the emotion that can overcome shame. Listen for Nell’s story of why her father built an expansion onto the house, and for details of numerous other micro-affections enacted in the lives of these characters to counter shame. The play suggests we may know others by trying to see through their eyes, or walk in their shoes, but we know ourselves in the same way.
This thought is further complicated by the fact that Robin is the link connecting the characters in this play, and he is dead. Listen for the number times Nell and Orla obsessively ask to know what Robin said to Gabby about them. Observe as the three women listen to Robin’s last voicemail message to Gabby, sent on the day of his death, and how each reacts differently and powerfully in an unspoken moment of introspection.
A very effective scene and prop design has been provided by Kyler Sterner, a humble rural home with a common area kitchen and sitting room that provides equally effective sight lines from every seat in the theater. The costumes are by Kambrea Blu, with light by Jayson Clark. Stephen Schapero has provided a playful and nostalgic sound score, complete with period evocative pop music and species accurate birdsong.
This handsome production at the Irish Classical Theatre is the North American premiere of The Loved Ones. The play was originally co-produced by Rough Magic and The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, and enjoyed success at the 2023 Dublin Theatre Festival. The script demonstrates Erica Murray's skill in crafting complex, relatable characters and her ability to find humor in the depths of human pain. Kyle LoConti's direction and an impressive cast bring Murray's words to life with power and authenticity. This production not only entertains but also challenges audiences to confront their own perceptions of widely accepted attitudes about love, shame, family, and empathy itself. As the characters travel toward their intertwined fates, we are reminded that connection and compassion often emerge from the most unexpected and even unwelcome places, offering hope even in the face of loss and deep regret.
The play continues Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays at 7:30, and Saturdays at 2 and 7:30, and Sundays at 2, through March 2, 2025.
Pay-What-You-Will Performances*:
Saturday, February 15, 2025 at 2:00pm
Saturday, February 15, 2025 at 7:30pm
Saturday, February 22, 2025 at 7:30pm
Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 7:30pm
(*Purchase in-person at the Box Office on the day of the performance. Seating subject to availability.)
Speaker Series & Special Event Reception:
Sunday, March 2, 2025 at 1:30pm
Featuring Distinguished Speaker: Erica Murray, Playwright.
Open Captioned Performance:
Saturday, February 22, 2025 at 2:00pm
(Open Captioned Performances: An LED captioning screen, located in the South East corner of the theatre displays the dialogue and any other audio portion of the production in text form in sync with the performance. For questions about reserving seating in view of the captioning signage, please contact ICTC’s Box Office at 716-853-4282 (voice), or email BoxOffice@irishclassical.com.)