Review: Consumed – Park Theatre, London

Consumed opens to a domestic scene that feels achingly familiar; the small thrust stage shows a typical kitchen scene, with potatoes on the stove and washing-up in the sink.

The audience in this intimate 200-seat space at Park theatre are invited to Eileen’s (Julia Dearden) 90th birthday party. So writes Calum Skuodas for theQR.co.uk…

What follows over the next 75 minutes lurches between black comedy and family drama, following four generations of women from the same Northern Irish family. Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and daughter all share the stage.

Generational Trauma

The show centres around generational traumas passed down through the female line – issues like body standards, eating disorders, and mental health. Each character vents their own frustrations with the world around them, and, crucially, explores their own relationship with their mother. It’s also an analysis of the hard emotional landscape of Troubles-era Belfast, and a burying of emotions – and bodies – that passes down through the generations.

What follows over the next 75 minutes lurches between black comedy and family drama, following four generations of women from the same Northern Irish family. Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and daughter all share the stage.

As can often be the case, the characters deal with the weight of these themes through humour. Writer Karis Kelly’s script is funny, genuine, and clearly drawn from her own experiences of Northern Ireland. The audience is treated to laughs throughout, most of them courtesy of great-grandmother Eileen Gillespie (Julia Dearden).

Her performance is fantastic – because of, and not despite of – her age. She delivers her lines with the acerbic, cutting edge of someone who is far too old to care and hardly moves around the stage as the rest of the cast is whipped into a frenzy around her by her harsh wit. It’s a testament to director Katie Posner, who keeps the pace high as the action courses through the show.

Much of the show’s conflict revolves around Gilly (Andrea Irvine) and her daughter Jenny (Caiomhe Farren), who chides her mother for her neuroticism and hoarding. Irvine’s performance is the most measured of the four, although she is the one with the most skeletons in her closet. Her movement across the stage was somewhat more static than I would have liked, and I struggled to catch much of her performance from my position in the circle.

A show that deserves to be seen

On the other hand, Farren captures all the doubts and stress of returning home, with a suitably brash performance, every bit the struggling mother of a difficult teenage daughter.

Writer Karis Kelly’s script is funny, genuine, and clearly drawn from her own experiences of Northern Ireland. The audience is treated to laughs throughout, most of them courtesy of great-grandmother Eileen Gillespie (Julia Dearden).

Her daughter Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin) attempts to drag the older women into the present day with proxy wars on gender, neurodivergence, and milk alternatives. The young actor’s performance stands up well against her accomplished colleagues, and she is strong throughout despite having less space to shine.

However, all of the considered character design and smart humour culminate in a sickening twist in the final act that raised the hairs on my arms and left me feeling queasy for hours after. It’s a brutal denouement that transforms the show from darkly funny to the blackest of dramas.

This show absolutely deserves to be seen and is a triumph of writing and performance. (If you’re interested in the editor’s review of the show’s Edinburgh Fringe debut last year, you’ll find it here.)

Featured Image: Caoimhe Farren, Julia Dearden and Andrea Irvine (Helen Murray) – Consumed