Alana Raquel Bowers, Donna Lynne Champlin, Maryann Plunkett, and Clare O'Malley Photo by Carol Rosegg

Mind you, it's an engaging women's picture, handily updated to the present and concocting some compelling situations for its quartet of women, all the while confining itself to one set. A shabby-genteel set, by Tatiana Kahvegian, but then, it's supposed to be. It's the County Clare farmhouse and sometimes Airbnb of Nell (Maryann Plunkett), an unworldly, seemingly aimless sixtysomething single mother still mourning the sudden loss of her college professor son, Robin, six months prior. She has invited Robin's widow, Orla (Clare O'Malley), to spread Robin's ashes where he grew up. Orla is practical and can-do, and while she and Nell don't outright despise each other, they're not close, either, with Nell seeing her as an imperfect partner for her dreamy, ethereal son. Also present: Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynne Champlin), a chirpy American visitor doing the Airbnb thing while chattering about her two favorite topics, birds and Harry Potter. But there's a bad hitch to the proceedings, one Warners scriptwriters would have envied.

For Gabby (Alana Raquel Bowers) has also suddenly turned up. She was a student of Robin's, and she's seven months pregnant with, she says, his child. At first Nell doesn't believe her; Robin, she insists, wasn't that kind of guy. But through their dialogue, well etched out by Murray, the evidence is piling up. And Gabby, having hidden her pregnancy from her parents and friends and planning to give the baby up for adoption, hasn't really thought her future through, or the child's.

Will the just-arriving Orla find out about Robin's infidelity, despite Nell's best efforts to cover it up? Well, of course, and other calamities will occur, especially around intermission, to complicate all four ladies' relationships with one another. The theme is grief, and Murray doesn't seem to have a lot specific to say about it, beyond its debilitating effects on coping with the world, and how it turns one inward, becomes obsessive. But she's great at teasing out personalities, building character through small gestures and offhand remarks.

And the cast is lovely. We've come to expect great things from Plunkett, and she doesn't disappoint, conveying Nell's overarching sadness and changeable moods in subtle ways that aren't in the script. And at one uncomfortable point when Nell understandably rages against the other three, she really lets fly.

Gabby isn't a funny character, but Bowers pulls humor out of her; her crestfallen "Oh my God, what is this place?", on hearing that Nell's internet is lacking, not only generates a laugh but tells us a lot about Gabby. O'Malley has a lot of contrasts to play, Orla's efficiency vs. her deep emotions, her practicality vs. her yearning for a greater purpose, and they're all masterfully delineated. And Champlin: At first Cheryl-Ann's verbosity is just annoying, but as we learn that she, too, is trying to busy away a devastating loss, she plunges into deeper waters like the pro she is. I've seen Champlin mostly in lighter things, By Jeeves and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" on TV and such, but this shows she's capable of a lot more.

The direction, by Nicola Murphy Dubey, is pitch-perfect, naturally paced and unfussily blocked. "Awkward pause," says Murray's script in several spots, and Dubey isn't afraid to just stop the action and give these women time to suss out the unseemly situation they find themselves in. Orla Long's costumes fit their characters, and Kat C. Zhou's lighting, which exposes a gloomy outdoors through an upstage window–it's a rainy weekend in Clare, and ain't that the norm–accentuates the mood.

Murray is particularly smart in setting up a situation, such as what we think is going to happen to Gabby's baby, and pulling the rug out from under us, which leads to a fadeout that is as quiet as it is satisfying. She could have hurried things up a bit more, and the disparity between acts–the first is almost an hour and a half, the second much shorter–gives The Loved Ones a lopsided feel. But make no mistake, it's a good night out. It might be even better with Bette Davis, Mary Astor, Jane Wyman, and Ethel Barrymore.