Review: CONSUMED, Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse
Photo credit: Pamela Raith
Four generations of women gather in a home in Northern Ireland to celebrate a 90th birthday for what should be a joyous celebration of life and family. However, this family gathering doesn’t quite go to plan as everyone is keeping their own secrets that inevitably start to spill out.
Karis Kelly’s writing is, on the whole, fantastic. She creates four women whom we can find reasons to like and dislike, as you can with most humans. She takes the play from being light and warm to being very dark and cold smoothly – although the very end does feel a little bit too over the top. The first of the two big reveals at the end of the play feels like enough. The play is well paced – not too long but never feeling rushed. It asks interesting questions about the differences between Northern Irish and English culture, as well as how different generations view the world and their pasts.
Katie Posner directs the play and keeps it full of action and movement, despite it all being set in one fairly small kitchen-come-diner. Lily Arnold’s set design is incredibly realistic, with immaculate attention paid to detail. We really do feel like we’re looking into a real house as we see the hallway and staircase in the background. Her costume design depicts the different generations of women well.
Jacob Sparrow has assembled a cast who portray four women that you feel like you know in real life. Julia Dearden plays the eldest woman, Eileen. She has wonderful comic timing, bringing laughs to moments that could otherwise just feel very heavy. Andrea Irvine as Gilly, Eileen’s daughter, gives a strong performance as the woman who wants everything to be perfect, brushing big secrets under the rug rather than dealing with her problems. Caoimhe Farren takes on the role of Jenny, Gilly’s daughter. She goes from loving mother to self-centred individual very naturally. She gives one the best ‘drunken’ performances we think we’ve ever seen, never allowing her characterisation to become too over the top. Muireann Nί Fhaogàin is Muireann, Jenny’s daughter. Unfortunately the writing of her character makes her a very stereotypical modern teenager but regardless, she performs the role well. All four women develop excellent rapports with one another, creating a family on stage that you feel could easily be yours or a family you know.
Consumed feels like a great companion piece to Dancing at Lughnasa playing upstairs in the Crucible. Consumed is certainly the more gripping play, but it addresses similar themes, through a more modern lens, around religion, Irish and English cultures and the desire to be seen in a certain light by the society you live in.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Jacob Bush
Consumed plays at Sheffield’s Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse until 11 October, with further info here.