Nasc presents a Rough Magic & Gate Theatre production

The Loved Ones by Erica Murray

Directed by Ronan Phelan

After a critically acclaimed world premiere at the Gate Theatre as part of the 2023 Dublin Theatre Festival, Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones visits Dún Laoghaire as part of a nationwide tour. In this beautiful play starring Jane Brennan, Helen Norton, Fanta Barrie and Margaret McAuliffe, a situation as unlikely as it is inevitable sends four lives reeling, leaving them questioning the true nature of love, loss and birds.

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. But 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”, 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.