Following on from a very successful run at the Gaiety in 2024, Mark O’Rowe’s intense family drama, Reunion, returned in October 2025 with largely the same cast which included Irish acting talent such as Ian-Lloyd Anderson, Venetia Bowe, Stephen Brennan, Leonard Buckley, Simone Collins, Peter Corboy, Kate Gilmore, Stephen Hagan, Aislín McGuckin and Catherine Walker, actors who are known for their roles in various Irish and international productions. O’Rowe also undertook directing duties. As in his 2014 drama, Our Few and Evil Days, O’Rowe continues his interest in intrafamilial strife and buried secrets that threaten to rip a family apart. On the evidence of the style of both of these dramatic texts, it is clear that O’Rowe has moved away from his monologue play roots and has embraced a more domestic, kitchen sink form of drama.

During an interview he did with RTÉ on the occasion of the revival of Reunion, O’Rowe outlined his initial vision for the type of play that Reunion would become:

My initial inspiration in writing Reunion was Chekhov’s major plays, particularly their structure. I liked the idea of four extended scenes, each of them long enough to create a sense of real life happening in real time. I also wanted to fill the stage with characters who felt complex and unpredictable and real, recreating the recognisable choreography of a large family gathering while also conveying its chaos and spontaneity: people talking over each other, digressions, people interrupting to call for one thing or another, subjects dropped mid-discussion to be picked up again later, or sometimes not at all. (O’Rowe 2025).

In this exchange, O’Rowe perfectly describes both the style and content, not just of Reunion, but of Chekhovian theatre in general. What is equally interesting, however, are the ways in which his work departs from a traditional Chekhov play. Audiences who are expecting a “Chekhov’s gun” moment of tragedy in Reunion may well have their expectations frustrated by the time of the play’s climactic moment.

In the same interview, O’Rowe also highlighted some aspects of Reunion that are representative of his dramatic œuvre more generally:

I wanted to explore the angry, frightened, domineering, ugly elements we all contain (and which are often heightened when with family), while also presenting their counterbalance: affection, generosity, pride, the heroic effort we make to combat the worst, most self-destructive elements of our nature in order to maintain our bonds with those we love, however problematic and painful these bonds may be. (O’Rowe 2025)

From Howie the Rookie (1999) onwards, O’Rowe has probed humanity’s heart of darkness while also suggesting that the darkness may actually have a heart. Reunion arguably contains the most sympathetic characters and moments of redemption that are to be found in O’Rowe’s theatrical work.

Reunion centres on a family gathering on an Island off the west of Ireland. It is entirely set in the kitchen/living room of the house in which members of the clan, anchored by the matriarchal figure of Elaine (Aislín McGuckin), have come for their gathering. The kitchen setting reminds the audience that this play will adhere to some of the formal and thematic aspects of a kitchen-sink drama such as claustrophobia and domestic discord.

Like many Russian texts (theatrical or otherwise), Reunion contains a large cast of characters whose relationship with each other creates complexity in situating individuals’ connections. Situating them within the narrative engages the audience who reasonably might take some time in the endeavour. It would likely have been easier to be armed with a family tree infographic to assist in determining which person is a sibling, a wife, a father-in-law, a boyfriend, and how the whole community of characters fits together. That being said, such a degree of concentration is rewarded by the tense and compelling plot that involves many moments of hysteria and aggression as tensions between the family members and their partners come to a head over the course of a day. As is the case with numerous works of tragedy and theatrical naturalism, the plot of Reunion revolves around various repressed truths that erupt to the surface and shatter certain illusions the characters have about themselves and their relations with others.

Reunion marks one major departure for the theatre of Mark O’Rowe: it is a rarity for his dramas to be set in a rural Irish setting as opposed to against an urban or suburban landscape. By making this staging decision, O’Rowe is placing the play in the context of a long Irish dramatic tradition of imagining Irish rurality; one that goes back at least to the theatrical works of the Irish Revival and the heyday of the Abbey Theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century. One particular work of the Irish Revival might be recalled from the beginning of Reunion, and it is likely that O’Rowe had elements of John Millington Synge’s Aran Island play Riders to the Sea (1904) in mind as he invites us to explore his world. As is the case with that archetypal work of Irish theatrical tragedy, O’Rowe’s Reunion contains palpable anxiety about the power of the sea and the destruction it can wreak on human lives. In the opening minutes of Reunion, Elaine casts herself in the role of Maurya, the domineering matriarch from the Synge play, in an exchange with her daughter Marilyn:

MARILYN.     It is pretty choppy. (Beat.) Come over and have a look. (Beat.) Ma.

Elaine sighs, then joins her at the window. Look at the heights of those there!

ELAINE. Jesus. (Long pause.) Would you say they’ll cancel the ferry?

MARILYN. Ah yeah. You couldn’t let people cross in those kinds of conditions.

ELAINE. I suppose.

Like Maurya, Elaine feels it her duty to keep her family safe from natural and human predatory forces and it is soon evident that she regards them as an extension of herself. Also, Elaine (like Maurya) suffers from the memory of her dead husband, Seán, about whom she wishes to reminisce with her family. It becomes apparent that this is one of the primary reasons she has organised this gathering. Tragically, no proper moments of remembrance or mourning for Seán ever occur during the play because they are frustrated by a series of arguments that undermine Elaine’s hopes and yearning for commemoration through recollection. For this reason, Reunion can be said to belong to Ireland’s enduring dramatic tradition of “theatre of memory”.

In Reunion, the sea functions as a version of Chekhov’s gun. By mentioning the sea and its power from the outset, its threat is made apparent and the tension concerning whether it will subsequently erupt for dramatic purposes, perhaps even to claim a life or lives before the play’s conclusion remains throughout the drama. These expectations are only resolved in the final moments of the action.

Near the beginning of Reunion, Elaine makes a remark that cascades through the plot: “I hate when there’s someone who does not fit in”. Much of the play’s action presents characters who either cannot or refuse to fit into the dynamic of the family unit and the present get-together. It is apparent in the tense exchanges between siblings Janice (Venetia Bowe) and Marilyn (Kate Gilmore) that range from passive aggressive to explicitly aggressive. Many of these confrontations bring to light events from the past that are insensitively revealed, and with devastating consequences.

Two non-family characters who do not fit in and add to the tension of the dysfunctional family dynamic are Felix – the father of one of the sons’ partners – and Aonghus, the former boyfriend of Marilyn. Felix functions as a detached observer of the intrafamilial strife and acts somewhat as a choric figure. As is often the case with such characters, whose observational objective detachment from many of the events can be compromised in some way, Felix appears to be struggling with alcoholism. Aonghus adds to the tension in the household by revealing that he still loves Marilyn and wishes to win her back. The final quarter of the plays focuses on his disappearance and possible drowning. Most of the other characters begin searching for him and leave audiences in a state of suspense as they are made to wonder whether, like a tragic version of Beckett’s Godot, Aonghus will appear onstage again.

Reunion ends in an open-ended way, and we are never certain about the fate of many of the characters. Notwithstanding this suspension of traditional narrative resolution most of them have been granted moments of redemption. This undecidable note at the conclusion of the drama is a feature of many post-crash Irish plays; a quality perhaps echoing a lack of certainty that has permeated the Irish state experiencing consequences of the recession of 2008, and the subsequent and inevitable austerity measures imposed on the Irish population for the decade afterwards.

Mark O’Rowe’s Reunion provides an extremely compelling night at the theatre that combines the tragic and the comic to create an effective dramatic cocktail. Some spectators will find themselves turning away with embarrassment at staged moments of social and interpersonal ineptitude and awkwardness, yet they will also be compelled to engage more than once when empathy and pathos are evoked. The acting is powerfully naturalistic (especially from Elaine and Felix) and each one of the characters is clearly individuated and roundly developed, so the invitation extended to respond to each of them as an individual is positively rewarding.