Karis Kelly’s “Consumed” At The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Here at the Edinburgh Fringe, as well as Gary McNair’s A Gambler’s Guide to Dying, I caught the world première of Karis Kelly’s Consumed. The play won the prestigious Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2022 and after the Edinburgh-run will be embarking on a UK tour.

Set in Northern Ireland, the action opens in a contemporary kitchen-cum-dining room, where everything on the surface looks truly pristine. Sitting at the top of a large table, an elderly woman, Eileen Gillespie, wears a tiny glittery party hat. She stares out at the audience, looking fed up, as she waits to celebrate her ninetieth birthday with her family. Immediately conflict erupts between the ‘birthday girl’ and her middle-aged daughter, Gilly, who flits around, frantically cooking soup, while Eileen exclaims bitterly that she is not in a party mood and actually loathes soup. Enter granddaughter Jenny and great granddaughter, Muireann, just arrived from London after an absence of three years, and the conflict escalates. The self-assured Muireann spouts out her knowledge about a wide range of subjects, including sustainability, the ecosystem, vegetarianism, all of which put her at odds with her more conservative relatives. Jenny is doing her best to put on a brave face, but suddenly, after a few glasses of wine, confesses that her husband has left her, a revelation which arouses only harsh criticism in the other women. As Eileen caustically remarks, if Jenny can’t shave her legs and dress in a decent fashion she will never keep a man. Jenny’s confession is quickly followed by her mother, who, pointing to the empty place at the table, admits that her husband is having an affair. Hilarious, often vicious, remarks follow pell-mell, during which Jenny freaks out and starts frantically pulling everything out of the cupboards, throwing plates of food on the floor and making the place a shambles. The play’s title begins to make sense, not only are the women consuming food, they are also consumed, psychologically speaking. From the moment Jenny open a large cubbyhole, which is filled with empty cardboard boxes, this seemingly domestic, dark comedy turns to surreal tragedy. Horror-struck, she discovers her father’s dead body, hanging lifeless at the back. This moment is met with absolute complacency from Gilly, who admits she knew her husband was in there but, to avoid spoiling the party, she had decided to put off calling the police. This real-life skeleton in the closet opens a can crawling with worms. The older women make allusions to the Troubles or Conflict (the war that ripped Northern Ireland apart from the late 1960s to 1998, when the Good Friday Peace Treaty was signed). Muireann vociferously complains that it is her generation which is still taking the brunt of an attitude, still pervasive in Northern Ireland, of pretending things never happened and therefore not facing up to them.

Consumed, by Karis Kelly, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2025.

With this play, Karis Kelly has accomplished a gripping in-depth exploration of intergenerational relationships in the context of a still traumatised country. As she digs into the tensions between the women across four generations, their complex identities also come to light. Eileen, for example, was brought up a Catholic and is now a Presbyterian. Instead, Muireann experiences the dilemma of not belonging anywhere, since her Northern Irish parents, a Catholic and a Protestant, moved to London, where she was born and brought up. With no particular religious or political convictions, she speaks standard English. The only visible sign of her Irishness is her Christian name. Kate Posner sensitively directs, bringing these carefully honed female characters and their conflictual relationships to the stage.

Consumed is produced by A Paines Plough, Belgrade Theatre, Sheffield Theatres and Women’s Prize for Playwriting in association with Lyric Theatre Belfast.