Limerick playwright has theatre debut in New York theatre
A LIMERICK playwright is breaking ground in The Big Apple and her new play has debuted in New York City.
The Loved Ones by Erica Murray had its debut on June 13 and will run until August 2 in the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York.
The play follows four women whose lives are connected in west Clare by a recent death, and also an upcoming birth.
Directed by Irish Rep’s Nicola Murphy Dubey, the darkly comic play is in good company in Irish Rep, where there is a big focus on prioritising the production of new Irish plays.
Starring Alana Raquel Bowers, Donna Lynne Champlin, Clare O’Malley and Maryann Plunkett, the play is on the Francis J Greenburger Mainstage at the prestigious New York theatre on 132 West 22nd Street.
In a remote farmhouse in west Clare, Nell is preparing to scatter her late son’s ashes with his grieving wife.
Meanwhile, an American tourist settles in for what she expects to be a peaceful countryside retreat.
When a young woman arrives at the cottage unexpectedly, the weekend takes a surprising and darkly comic turn. As tensions rise and secrets are revealed, these four strangers are forced into an uneasy reckoning with the past and each other.
Hailed by The Irish Times as “wonderful, witty, assured and entertaining” and praised by The Irish Independent as “a glorious personality clash extravaganza,” Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones is a sharp, deeply moving, and wickedly funny new Irish play about motherhood, grief, and the families we find when life doesn’t go to plan.
The Loved Ones was part of the New Works Fall Festival reading series in 2025.