CONSUMED
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★★★★
“a sophisticated and ambitious piece of writing”
Four generations of Northern Irish women gather for their great-grandmother’s 90th birthday: a family kitchen, a table set for dinner, and a tangle of unspoken histories. Over the course of the meal, tensions simmer, humour bubbles, and old wounds begin to show.
Karis Kelly’s Consumed, winner of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, starts as a sharp and funny domestic drama. There is a clear and believable connection between the four women, with glances, shared gestures, and that mix of affection and irritation that comes from a lifetime under the same family roof. The youngest of the four, Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin), passionate about climate change, patriarchy and oat milk, clashes with the more traditional views of her elders, while the matriarchal Eileen (Julia Dearden) and her daughter Gilly (Andrea Irvine) bring their own layered history into the room. References to marriage, relationships, and what it means to “wear the trousers” in a partnership give a smart, often funny look at generational shifts and the ways some things have not shifted at all.
The performances are uniformly strong. Dearden brings a magnetic, grounded presence to great-grandmother Eileen, her deep voice and unfiltered honesty contrasting beautifully with Irvine’s effervescent Gilly, who hides her own struggles behind a bubbly façade. Caoimhe Farren has admirable conviction as Jenny and takes her to the extremities of emotion on her journey through the play. Ní Fhaogáin is convincing as the teenager great-granddaughter, although at times could do a little more to ensure she is keeping in tone with the rest of the cast.
Lily Arnold’s set is gorgeous in its detail, from the mould creeping through the wallpaper to the scuffed skirting boards and the cupboard crammed with expired tins and Bags for Life. The latter is a sly nod to the generational gap between caring for the planet and knowing how to go about it in practice. The smell of real cooking drifts into the audience, making the kitchen feel genuinely lived-in. Beth Duke’s sound design, Guy Hoare’s lighting and Karis Kelly’s witty script combine to welcome us fully into this family home.
As the piece moves into its final third, the familiar realism tilts suddenly towards supernatural horror. Flickering lights and rumbling sounds hint at something darker lurking in the house. It is an exciting shift in the writing, but the transition feels abrupt in performance. The tone wavers between psychological horror and heightened dark comedy, leaving some moments caught between the two without committing fully to either. A couple of emotional escalations, such as Jenny’s sudden outburst trashing the room, also jar against the otherwise well-paced dynamics.
Even with those uneven final beats, Consumed is a sophisticated and ambitious piece of writing, rich with ideas about generational trauma, women’s roles, and the histories we carry in our bodies as well as our memories. It is sharply funny, often moving, and brought to life by four captivating performances. With a little more space to breathe into its tonal shift, it could land with even greater impact.
CONSUMED
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Reviewed on 10th August 2025 at Traverse 1 at Traverse Theatre
by Joseph Dunitz
Photography by Pamela Raith
