In Erica Murray’s “The Loved Ones,” which recently opened at Irish Repertory Theater, no male character appears onstage. Yet the four women at its center spend a great deal of time discussing the same philandering one.
These women find themselves accidentally sharing a farmhouse in Ireland owned by Nell (Maryann Plunkett), partly because she has forgotten to block off the weekend on her Airbnb calendar — she’s a “superhost.” That lapse explains the presence of Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynne Champlin), a messianically cheerful American obsessed with “Harry Potter,” birding, and leaving “extensive reviews” of her Airbnb experiences.
Then another unexpected visitor arrives at Nell’s door: Gabby (Alana Raquel Bowers), who is seven months pregnant with the child of Nell’s recently deceased son, Robin, who was Gabby’s teacher at university. To buy time to collect her thoughts, Nell persuades Cheryl-Ann to take Gabby out for a full Irish breakfast.
Fate has other surprises in store. Robin’s widow, Orla (Clare O’Malley), soon arrives with her husband’s ashes, which Nell plans to scatter that weekend. Though she may be grieving, Orla is also preoccupied with the idea of attempting I.V.F. one more time. She’s had three miscarriages and “one emergency C-section at 24 weeks,” and she’s hoping Nell will give her permission to do this thing — to move on from Robin’s death. Orla feels that finally having a child will give her life stability.
With her forehead-tightening ponytail and crisp white shirt, she stands in sharp sartorial contrast to Gabby, who favors oversized T-shirts and sweats. Yet the women take an immediate liking to each other; Orla even gives up her comfy guest room in the attic for Gabby. That Orla will eventually discover the identity of Gabby’s paramour is almost a given: From the moment she walks through Nell’s door in her sensible shoes, we sense that informational asymmetries will symmetrize with time. When a medical crisis sends one of the women to the hospital, old sympathies and new allegiances are put under pressure.
Though “The Loved Ones” flunks the Bechdel test — which assesses whether the women in a film or other works of fiction discuss something other than a man — it benefits from a cast that lends weight and texture to Murray’s characters even when the script veers toward predictability. Bowers and O’Malley find emotional credibility in the play’s thornier entanglements. The standout is Champlin, whose Cheryl-Ann possesses the guilelessness and frolicsome nature of a Labrador puppy. She is also the play’s closest thing to a political consciousness, lamenting the extinction of several avian species. (Strikingly, nothing is uttered about the ethical implications or costs of bringing a child into a fast-warming world.)
Were it possible to make an actual reservation at Nell’s West Clare farmhouse, I’d recommend it. A view of the pinkening sky outside a porthole window alone would be an enticement to city dwellers. Unfortunately, the play itself lacks the same meticulous attention to detail that Tatiana Kahvegian lavishes on the set. Nell, for instance, warns her guests about “intermittent” internet access, but her phone pings repeatedly with text message notifications; Instagram and voice mail are unimpededly accessible on the other women’s devices.
The script also tells us it’s summer, but the guests are unaccountably bundled up in sweatshirts and cardigans (Orla Long is the costume designer) and warm themselves by a fireplace. Seated in a rocking chair near the embers and hoping to head off any conversation with the supremely extroverted Cheryl-Ann, the soignée, London-based Orla sticks her nose in a copy of Sally Rooney’s “Intermezzo,” but it’s a U.S. paperback rather than the British version. (Nothing in the play suggests that Orla has spent any time in the States.)
Incongruities like these are not fatal to the play, which Nicola Murphy Dubey sensitively directs, but they hint at an unresolved tension in its own sense of where it’s headed. Often, it’s inclined toward the past. Gabby — a young Black Englishwoman whose race is never addressed — measures her predicament against Nell’s experience as a teenage mother, while the dead Robin looms over nearly every conversation.
A final sighting of a robin — Murray, it seems, cannot quite resist the obvious symbol — brings us back to you know who. For a man who manifests only in a voice mail message, Robin gets an awful lot of stage time.
The Loved Ones Through Aug. 2 at Irish Repertory Theater, Manhattan; irishrep.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.
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