Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones is a poignant meditation on grief and betrayal that offers a potentially melodramatic setup but largely avoids obvious broad strokes in favor of quieter pleasures—sharply observed dialogue, characters who defy the labels placed on them, and an exploration of the difficulties and power of empathy. An outstanding ensemble led by the great Maryann Plunkett depicts the international group of women—Irish, English, and American—brought together in rural West Clare, Ireland, through tragic circumstances that threaten to divide them yet end up eliciting a precarious and precious sense of solidarity.   

The venue is St. Luke’s Theatre, but for all practical purposes, it isn’t anymore. The Restaurant Row mainstay is now the Wicked Tickle, an East Nashville dive where the beer is cheap, the country-and-western is tangy and smart, and Cindy the bartender is on hand to crack you open a Pabst. And it’s the home of Music City, a return engagement of a musical that played well at the West End Theatre in 2024 and has only ripened with age.

A tent creates a confined yet evocative space—the image might conjure up strong memories and associations, perhaps of childhood camping trips or adolescent backyard adventures or later-in-life attempts at experiencing the great outdoors. For Ari and Brit, the protagonists of Victoria Lynne Barclay’s new two-hander Camping, the tent is a world unto itself. From ages 15 to 40, the two women navigate life—including relationships with inadequate men—and feelings for each other that they can never quite come to terms with, through events that always return them to the same tent. That Barclay makes this contrivance feel largely natural is one of the strengths of this sensitively observed play.

Millie, the cheeky British teenage expatriate at the center of Youth in Flames, begins the play drifting contentedly through life. In playwright-performer Mimi Martin’s engaging and deeply affecting solo drama, directed by Jessica Wiley, that carefree detachment is challenged by the turmoil of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, leading to a journey of self-discovery and moral reckoning.

Eric Bentley’s 1972 play Are You Now or Have You Ever Been revisits the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC) investigation into Communist influence in the entertainment industry during the mid-20th century. The dialogue is drawn directly from the hearing’s transcripts, making this revival as much a documentary as a drama. Directed by Anna D. Shapiro, the production captures the grind of a political investigation in all its tedious forms.

The pub in Irish dramas is a center not just of drinking, but also of telling tall tales. In J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, a new arrival, Christy Mahon, boasts of killing his father. In Conor McPherson’s The Weir, the regulars exchange ghost stories. But the atmosphere of Catch of the Day, by Megan Jenkins and the Red Fox Theatre company, is different. There’s music already happening on stage when one enters, and the gregarious cast may be engaging the audience in conversation or offering potato chips up and down the aisle or sniping at one another. The slapdash mix of music and comedy is more goulash than ghoulish, yet the lack of structure turns out to be one of the show’s charms.