Reunion at the Kiln Theatre – review

Mark O’Rowe’s Reunion is proof you don’t need any bells and whistles to tell a good story. A rich, humane script full of details, in focus and out, that feels painfully relatable yet unexpected.

Elaine has gathered her family, now grown, to their old holiday house to reminisce about her late husband. But decades-long tensions combine with new partners, and somehow they don’t get to reminiscing much.

The simple kitchen set-up and freehanded cast (ten in total) make it an easy comparison to another domestic Irish play, Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman. But where that story showed the political to be personal, O’Rowe is focused entirely on the personal here. On the one hand, your family sees you more clearly than anyone, and on the other, they can’t see you at all for the little troublemaker you were 20 years ago.

The script is funny and sad in equal measure, and while it relies on well-trod family dynamics, it surprises you just when you’re sure where it’s going. Everyone gets a fair fleshing out, even the largely comic relief, Felix (Stephen Brennan), whose character arc will break your heart. The performances are so strong across the board, there’s something almost method about the relationships, as though they’ve gone to the effort of spending months in character, living as a family in all their love and cruelty.

So much is woven into the details: an uncomfortable glance that doesn’t play out for another half hour, a seemingly accidental brushing past that you’ll second-guess as the characters reveal themselves. It’s so much so that Leonard Buckley’s Ciaran, appearing with an arm sling that’s barely mentioned, becomes an ingenious way to physically remove him from the action, so we decide on the way home. With a broken arm, he genuinely can’t help. But a quick parsing of the script reveals that Buckley likely injured himself, and the production makes do.

A domestic drama par excellence, filled with the kind of affection and misery only a family can exact. There are moments where the laughs come so quickly, one after the other, that it feels like a farce. But O’Rowe is constantly throwing double-punches, thumbing the joke on the same spot as the open wound.