Consumed - Edinburgh Fringe 2025

Consumed – Edinburgh Fringe 2026

Paines Plough, Traverse Theatre

“Consumed” is quite the Edinburgh Fringe Festival darling.  Karis Kelly’s play for four women won the Women’s prize for playwrighting in 2022.  Set amid a family reunion in Northern Ireland it leads to a non-unexpected explosion of repressed emotion, truths and trauma. In a neat box set with a central kitchen table we get a clear idea of the territory before the play begins.

It opens with Eileen (Julia Dearden) a mighty matriarch with a foul mouth and a temper to match whose 90th birthday is celebrated today. Making her way carefully to the table she sits. Eileen is a hilarious larger than life character who is the centre of the drama – cartoonish at times but the intention is for the grotesque to plated at the beginning of this drama given that is ultimately takes us places we could never expect.  There is Gilly (Adrea Irvine) the long-suffering daughter and mother to Jenny (Caoimhe Farren) who returns from London with her daughter Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin).

Lots of obvious resonances abound, recalling “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” and any other play where mothers are blamed for the trauma inherited by daughters, absent and idolised fathers and personal and political pain. It is well worn territory. To be honest I found it all a bit obvious.  The youngest of the four characters is given text that explains the nature or inheritance – whether it be for the environment, personal eating disorder, relationships. This is a world where every character of a different generation is grappling with things unsaid and unexpressed and that this family represents a bigger history of violence. The production is shouty and shrill and I kept hoping this was going somewhere!

A side note on the design – deceptively straight to begin with but it wittily serves as support for the surface safety of the characters and initial situation (a harmless 90^th birthday) and what haunts them underneath.  The clutter and realistic action it inspires – especially from Gilly – is powerful. In its detail of clutter, cooking and things past their use by date it throws a shadow over the action.

There is a shocking plot twist which borders on the grand guignol with audible gasps from the audience and the play quickly unravels and lands somewhere quite strange.  From a kitchen table drama, we are propelled into the obviously poetic and ambiguous. I guess this is called subverting our expectations, but it does rather feel we’ve ended up in the wrong play. For now. With more work this play could emerge with a new, fresh take on the family drama.  As it is, it has plenty of meat on its bones but needs more time to marinate!

Review by Kate Gaul