Karis Kelly’s drama won the Women’s prize for playwriting in 2022 and you can see why. Set amid a family reunion dinner in Northern Ireland, only the women are present here. And in the way of many such theatrical reunions, it leads to an almighty blow-up, yet there is no hint of cliche. Kelly is a talented playwright navigating between black humour and pain.
At the head of the table is Eileen (Julia Dearden), a foul-mouthed matriarch whose 90th birthday they are celebrating. Gilly (Andrea Irvine) is her daughter and the mother of Jenny (Caoimhe Farren), who left long ago for a life in London. Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin), the youngest, is Jenny’s London-born-and-raised daughter.
Slickly directed by Katie Posner, it is horribly, humorously, gripping: reminiscent of Beth Steel’s Till the Stars Come Down at its best, with flecks of Martin McDonagh’s mother-daughter drama The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Daughters cyclically blame their mothers for the pain and harm they’ve inherited, while letting their fathers off the hook.
Ghosts at the table … (from left) Muireann Ní Fhaogáin, Andrea Irvine, Julia Dearden and Caoimhe Farren in Consumed. Photograph: Pamela Raith
Eileen appears, at first, like a cartoonishly drawn battleaxe, but she is perhaps best at hiding vulnerability. Gilly has comical spurts of rage despite her cultivated, singalong calmness. Jenny is full of blame towards her, pointing out maternal shortcomings like a stroppy teen, and is superbly played by Farren. Muireann is the flattest character, satirised for her gen Z talk of gluten and environmental harm. She has an eating disorder but it is too briefly broached and appears to fit the greater scheme of a play in which each woman is grappling with suppressed trauma, passed down and ingested as their own.
The play travels from dining table realism to the baroque. The rumbles in Beth Duke’s sound design foreshadow this turn into lyrical and symbolic new ground. Talk of Northern Ireland’s past peppered the early scenes but it now becomes clear that this cross-generational family represents a bigger history of violence. The play’s shape-shifting is part of its audaciousness, but this late turn is brief and leaves much hanging.
It is a lot to grapple with in 70 minutes and you feel as if Consumed could be developed into a bigger play at a longer length, or streamlined for this shorter one. Either way, its potential is clear.