Through March 2
THE LOVED ONES Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company
By Augustine Warner
A women’s play?
Clearly there’s a female playwright, Erica Murray, with “The Loved Ones.”
There are four female characters, one pregnant.
One character laments her problems getting pregnant and carrying full-term.
So, it’s a women’s play.
No, not really.
That’s because there’s a guy and he’s dead and left behind a violation of one of the most enforced rules on a college campus, not getting sexually involved with students.
Before Robin died, suddenly, for unexplained reasons, this college professor at a college in London impregnated one of his students.
His wife didn’t know about this, nor did his mother back in her remote and renovated farmhouse in Ireland’s County Clare.
Then, pregnant Gabby (Ember Tate-Steele) shows up at that farmhouse and tells the prospective grandmother what went on.
Nell (Eileen Dugan) doesn’t handle it all that well because she hasn’t handled Robin’s death all that well and is set to dispose of his ashes the next day.
Robin’s wife Orla (Rebecca Elkin) is due to arrive the next day with the ashes and Nell is trying to process the impending baby and the damage to what she thought of her son.
It’s even harder because Nell never knew the name of Robin’s father, a one-night stand long ago with a wandering student, heading through part of Ireland’s deepest tourist country.
The fourth player in all of this is Cheryl-Ann (Smirna Mercedes) a bimbo American birdwatcher based in Nell’s place, which has bedrooms available for B&B use.
She’s processing a family death as Cheryl-Ann stalks Irish birds she has never seen before, lots of time and space to consider.
She lets slip Gabby’s situation when Orla is there and the widow blows up because she spent so much time and mental energy trying to have a child during the ten years of her marriage to Robin.
Gabby isn’t handling the pregnancy that well and isn’t getting any support from her parents because she hasn’t told them, suggesting there isn’t much contact because she’s noticeably pregnant.
Maybe she wants support from Nell and Gabby will get that by arriving in the West of Ireland with no notice and no warning.
It’s all crazy until Gabby suddenly has problems and must go to the hospital.
The women decide it’s time to resolve the mess and they do.
Obviously, they could just walk away from Gabby and move on, which wouldn’t resolve anything because the baby is coming, whether they like it or not.
It’s certainly not a happy ending although it’s a workable one in an impossible situation.
Director Kyle LoConti has a strong cast which works well on the Irish Classical’s complicated stage.
Kyle Sterner contributed an effective set for this look at love, loss and stupidity (Robin).
It’s all as if Robin (way back when) set off a slow exploding bomb and left everyone else to clean up the debris.
It’s worth seeing to watch those left behind dealing with one of those problems very high on the parental worst nightmare list.
The difficulty is that Robin had too many on the list of “The Loved Ones.”
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