“Reunion” at Kiln Theatre
Neil Dowden in North London
22 September 2025
★★★
The title of Irish theatre and film writer/director Mark O’Rowe’s play Reunion is loaded with irony. First seen at the Galway International Arts Festival last year, it depicts a family gathering in a second home on an island off the west coast of Ireland that is supposed to honour the recently deceased patriarch and celebrate togetherness, but within 24 hours descends into acrimonious arguments exposing deep-seated divisions. There is a danger that the over-familiar tropes of dysfunctional family drama – especially in an Irish setting – will make the play seem hackneyed and even verge on parody, but the convincing dialogue and committed performances largely overcome this.
Stephen Brennan provokes as Felix.
Photo credit: Mark Senior.
Widowed Elaine has invited her three children – daughters Marilyn and Janice, and son Maurice – with their partners to the holiday home where the family has spent happy times in the past. Her daughter-in-law Holly has also brought along her lonely father Felix, whose wife walked out on him ten years ago, while Elaine’s London-based younger sister Gina – herself recently deserted by her partner – pops up as a surprise.
But after the initial excited get-together – with the men bunking off to the pub while the women prepare dinner – tensions start to simmer during the meal, exacerbated by the unexpected appearance of Marilyn’s former boyfriend Aonghus who has returned from Germany as a published poet. After he comes back drunk in the middle of the night to plead his still passionate love for her all hell breaks loose as the other men throw him out, with Aonghus threatening to kill himself.
The incident acts as a catalyst for the break-up of surface unity within the family. The longstanding sibling rivalry between Janice and Marilyn explodes, with each making accusations about the other, dragging their respective partners Stuart – who is feeling sexually neglected since the birth of their two young children – and Ciaran – who is awaiting news about his terminally ill mother – into their quarrel. Meanwhile Maurice and Holly’s rocky relationship is at a critical point with her pregnant. And Gina makes a play for the astounded Felix.
At times, O’Rowe seems to have overloaded Reunion with many of the domestic conflicts present especially in Irish plays by the likes of Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Enda Walsh, and Martin McDonagh, with Conor McPherson’s The Brightening Air at the Old Vic a very recent example. But this is by no means a misery fest. The moments of melodrama are counteracted by dollops of black humour that make the play an entertaining and unpredictable cocktail of shocking revelations and awkward comedy.
O’Rowe’s own naturalistically detailed production is never dull, with the dynamics between different family members believable, though it’s difficult to feel much sympathy for these flawed, self-centred people. Francis O’Connor’s naturalistically detailed design features a kitchen/diner and living room with ascending staircase, while Aoife Kavanagh’s evocative sound includes the clashing of waves and squawking of sea birds.
Aislín McGuckin’s Elaine spirals from maternal warmth to foul-mouthed frustration as her family self-destructs in front of her despite her best efforts to hold things together, contrasted with Catherine Walker’s uninhibited, narcissistic Gina. Kate Gilmore’s Marilyn and Venetia Bowe’s Janice spar with increasingly outrageous insults, while Leonard Buckley (with one arm in a sling) plays the mild-mannered Ciarán and Stephen Hagan the dodgily charming Stuart. Peter Corboy is the guilt-ridden Maurice and Simone Collins his accusatory wife Holly. The scene-stealing Stephen Brennan provokes both guffaws and sighs as the hapless outsider Felix, seemingly the only person who appreciates the poetry of Ian-Lloyd Anderson’s intensely self-dramatizing Aonghus.
