The Loved Ones – 19 June 2026

Unexpected pregnancy is tough news at the best of times. Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones begins with one isolated pregnant woman named Gabby (Alana Raquel Bowers) whose partner (and professor!) Robin has recently passed. She shows up on Robin’s mother, Nell (Maryann Plunkett)’s doorstep unannounced, and enters into a circle of grief that also includes Robin’s wife, Orla (Clare O’Malley) and Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynne Champlin), a random guest at Nell’s Airbnb who provides comic relief but also the insight of an outsider as the night progresses.

Despite being centered around a man’s death, The Loved Ones is a spark of life that ingeniously infuses the importance of shared humanity and the ability to love under seemingly impossible circumstances. The connections between Orla and the student her husband cheated on her with are monumentous, and Nell’s determination to simultaneously preserve her image of her son as well as accept the women who were in his life is courageous and admirable. At the end of the play, it is clear that everybody grieves differently. It is equally clear, that we all love the same.

The scenic design (Tatiana Kahvegian) was simple and elegant. The color pallet was deliberately drab, which helped evoke loneliness in all of the necessary places. The people stood out among these colors, helped along by Orla Long’s costume design. Lighting (Kat. C. Zhou) and sound (Caroline Eng) were incredibly well-integrated into the show such that nothing in particular stood out as a cue until the very end when Nell and Cheryl-Ann went to scatter Robin’s ashes. Collectively, the design elements did a spectacular job of creating the world of the show—primarily Nell’s world as she is the only character who truly inhabits the space that we’re looking at for most of the show.

In terms of character arcs, Nell does the most growing. Maryann Plunkett is a treasure. Some of her most brilliant moments occur when Nell is not speaking but is just absorbing the dynamics of the room. It is clear that Nell is doggedly determined to understand the situation and her place in it. It is simultaneously clear that Nell is grappling with the particulars before ultimately deciding that the dynamics that created this situation no longer matter—what matters most is assessing how to move forward. Nell takes her lead from Orla in this. Orla is rather strange in that she doesn’t take out her husband’s infidelity on Gabby or Gabby’s unborn child, even in the context of her own difficult fertility journey. Orla marvels at her own acceptance, realizing that, like her, Gabby is a victim—not of Robin, but of the world. Cheryl-Ann has a difficult part to play because she has to make herself fit among the grievers without becoming one of them. Gabby’s role, though central, is simplest, as her character is young, naïve, and more than a little scared.

The end left a lot of questions unanswered, which I think is best. It would have been very convenient and tidy for Gabby to offer Orla the baby, but that’s not what happens. In the end, each character reaches an individual conclusion after experiencing the collective power of togetherness. Gabby tells her family she’s pregnant. Orla asserts that she isn’t fully ready to deal with her husband’s death.  Nell scatters her son’s ashes. And Cheryl-Ann? She spots some birds with a renewed knowledge that she can connect with other people despite her sister’s passing. The Loved Ones turns out to be about the individual lessons we learn from sharing of ourselves with an open mind and an open heart. It is a beautiful, well-presented story that shows everyone at their best through showing them at their worst. The production is interesting and invigorating as we are reminded about the importance of life, even in the wake of death.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Print Shop PR.