For anyone who has witnessed firsthand the decline and death of a loved one, Maeve McGrath’s one-woman ‘Show in a Bag’ offering will generate unsettling resonances. Not that it luxuriates crassly in the sometimes-ignoble details that can accompany the common, ordinary death awaiting most of us. The everyday inevitabilities of both life and death are represented equally well here.

Performing a straightforward script written by Gavin Kostick and ably directed by Liam Halligan, McGrath plays Orlagh, a night shift staff nurse at a Limerick nursing home who is continually greeting and caring for elderly patients in their last year, last month, or last week of life. When the irascible Vera admits herself to the home, unaccompanied by any family, Orlagh is confronted with the consequences of a life lived completely for self.

While the character of Orlagh is crafted sympathetically in the writing, McGrath’s performance can border on a cloying earnestness at times. There’s also a lack of specificity in McGrath’s portrayal of the varying figures in Orlagh’s life, signaling a possible missed opportunity in the directing. Regardless, McGrath is able by the play’s end to effectively convey the emotional earthquake that Orlagh experiences in comprehending her own fleeting mortality.

Jesse Weaver