Reunion – Kiln Theatre, London

Writer and Director: Mark O’Rowe

 First performed at the Galway International Arts Festival in 2024, Mark O’Rowe’s Reunion comes to the Kiln and looks set to be a huge success. Slow to start, it builds to a deliciously layered, fast-paced, unpredictable comedy, O’Rowe imaginatively fleshing out each of the ten characters.

We’re in a rented cottage on an Irish island where Elaine has invited her three adult children, Janice, Marilyn and her favourite, Maurice, along with their partners, Stuart, Ciaran and Holly. They haven’t all got together in a long time and are here to remember Sean, Elaine’s husband, who died some five years ago. Elaine’s younger sister Gina joins them. She’s getting over a recent relationship break-up. Somewhere in the background, there’s Felix, Holly’s distinctly stodgy old dad, who wanders in and out to help himself to another beer. Attractive Elaine (Aislín McGuckin) is understandably horrified when someone mistakenly supposes he’s her new love interest.

A storm is raging outside (wonderful sound design by Aoife Kavanagh). Surely everyone is about to get blind drunk and start hurling abuse? But in fact, for the whole of the first act, everyone seems to get along just fine. The comedy is gentle. There are some fairly pedestrian discussions of holiday destinations and whether or not courgettes are part of a traditional Irish meal. You begin to wonder where this is all heading. But then the cracks start to appear, and the comedy sharpens. Glamorous Gina (Catherine Walker) reminisces drily about her first sexual experience: ‘Ah, sure, you know yourself: a fella that age, you may as well not even be there’.  Janice starts to show her true colours. ‘I can’t imagine you as a mother,’ she says to her sister Marilyn, smug in her position as mother of two.

The revelations start to come. A pregnancy is revealed before the planned big announcement. Aonghus, Marilyn’s former boyfriend, has been spotted in the pub. He’s been living in Germany and has now returned with a wife and baby daughter. Before long, he turns up at their door, bearing copies of his first book of poetry. We hear some tantalising titles: ‘An Oedipal Artefact’, ‘Scooby Doo’ (it’s about the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, apparently) and ‘Fart’. Ian-Lloyd Anderson revels in the part.

But it’s late at night that things heat up and Francis O’Connor’s set really comes into its own. Couples disappear to various bedrooms, leaving one or two characters alone at the kitchen table. Sometimes the room empties, only for one couple to storm downstairs in pyjamas to conduct an unexpectedly vitriolic row. A married man tries to confide his marital discontents. The comedy gets funnier and faster as the three sisters begin to utter some home truths. And then in the early hours, there’s a particularly hilarious entrance. By morning, we witness the consequences of the night before, and we’re still laughing.

What really makes Reunion zing is the fantastic acting. Six of the ten performers are from the original cast, and everyone makes their part their own. Simone Collins, Venetia Bowe and Kate Gilmore bring out the true natures of the young women. Peter Carboy as the meek Maurice is a great contrast to Stephen Hagan’s suave Stuart and Leonard Buckley’s likeable Ciaran. But stand-out performer is the tremendous Stephen Brennan as Felix. An unpromising part on paper – Felix barely says a word – Brennan brings subtle comic mastery to the role of the unwanted older guest. Any details would be a spoiler, but the scenes in which he comes into his own are pure joy, both comic and unexpectedly poignant.

A complex piece to choreograph, as it were, O’Rowe’s direction means no one misses a beat. As writing, he makes sure every plot detail counts. Having said that, there is room for a bit of judicious excision in the early parts. The ending, too, is a bit flat. But after so much hilarity, who’s complaining?

Runs until 11 October 2025