Consumed
★★★☆☆ Energetic
Traverse (Venue 15): Thu 31 Jul – Sun 24 Aug 2025
Review by Hugh Simpson
Consumed at the Traverse is a fiercely funny domestic comedy that turns into something else entirely. If it isn’t completely successful, it’s always interesting.
From Paines Plough, Belgrade Theatre and Sheffield Theatre, Karis Kelly’s play won the Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2022. Four generations of the same family gather in a kitchen in Northern Ireland to celebrate the 90th birthday of Eileen (Julia Dearden). Eileen is restless and foul-mouthed, while her daughter Gilly (Andrea Irvine) is up to high doh in her preparations.
Julia Dearden and Caoimhe Farren in Consumed. Pic: Pamela Raith.
Gilly’s daughter Jenny (Caoimhe Farren) arrives from London without her husband but bearing considerable resentment, with her teenage daughter Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin) in tow. Cue much high-octane, high-energy working out of family problems,
The set-up at first seems hyper-realistic almost to the point of surrealism. There is one of those ludicrously detailed sets, with stuffed cupboards, working ovens, functional clocks and overflowing bins.
So far, so domestic sitcom. But it is soon clear that, while rooted in the everyday, it is heading somewhere else, almost as if someone had commissioned Philip Ridley to write that sitcom. Those family problems soon encompass inter-generational trauma and the fatal effects of conflict.
The narrative does then take some sharp turns that don’t always come off, with bumps in the road that are all too clearly felt. The end result, however, is always compelling as well as scabrously funny.
Muireann Ní Fhaogáin and Caoimhe Farren in Consumed. Pic: Pamela Raith.
The performances are suitably full of life. Dearden’s Loyalist great-granny is constantly shocking, while Irvine’s portrayal of a woman barely in control of herself benefits from some glorious comic timing.
Farren’s self-obsessed workaholic is also well observed, while Ní Fhaogáin’s troubled, self-righteous benefits from being comparatively underplayed.
Katie Posner’s direction is as energetic as can be imagined, while Lily Arnold’s set is a thing of wonder; not least the wonder of how on earth it can appear on that stage and then disappear, every day of the Fringe.
It is all a bit scattergun, and is never likely to sustain its manic energy to the end. However, the unexpected turn the play takes makes it all the more intriguing.
Running time: One hour and 15 Minutes(no interval).
Traverse Theatre (Traverse 1), 10 Cambridge St, EH1 2ED. (Venue 15).
Thursday 31 July – Sunday 24 August 2025.
Daily (Not Mon): Various times (see website for details)
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Book here on the Traverse Website.
Paines Plough: www.painesplough.com.
Belgrade Theatre: www.belgrade.co.uk.
Muireann Ní Fhaogáin, Andrea Irvine, Julia Dearden and Caoimhe Farren in consumed. Pic: Pamela Raith.
ENDS
