The more observant amongst you will have noticed that I classified this play under the heading Comedy, which indeed it was, but there was so much more to it than a laughfest.
The whole production was set – pardon the pun – in the kitchen/diner of a house on the occasion of Great Grandma’s 90th Birthday Party. There were only four guests, all on the distaff side of the same family and each representing a different generation.
The partygoers: Muireann, played by Muireann Ní Fhaogáin; Gilly, Andrea Irvine; Eileen, Julia Dearden and Jenny, Caoimhe Farren. By the way, the house was not suffering from subsidence.
The des res in question was situated in Belfast and belonged to Gilly, but Eileen lived there with her and her husband, who was not present at the gathering. Jenny, her daughter and her daughter, Muireann – there will be a test at the end – had come over from London for the bash.
The play relied on the stereotypical identification of the various life stages, again, pardon the pun, of those involved. Eileen was approaching the end of her days and was both eccentric and staunchly set in her beliefs, Gilly was post menopausal, given to hoarding and bouts of erratic behaviour. Jenny had just split with her husband, something which she had kept from her seniors, and was knocking back the vin rouge like there was no tomorrow, whilst Muireann was the woke, environmentally concerned teenager with an eating disorder.
When I say that the comedy relies on stereotypes, it was not done to reinforce them, but more to shatter the preconceptions they suggested.
Muireann Ní Fhaogáin as Muireann and Jenny, Caoimhe Farren, share a mother/daugher moment
The event, there was no story as such, was set in the present day, so The Troubles were more significant to Eileen, a staunch Protestant, than the others. When told of Jenny’s marital situation she reminded her that she should have heeded her warning about marrying a builder, and an Irish Catholic builder at that. She didn’t put it quite so politely as I am suggesting, her outbursts on all the topics raised in the play were littered with F bombs, making Mrs Brown sound like a Sunday School teacher. The irony being that whenever Jenny or Muireann said so much as a ‘bloody’ they were castigated by Gilly about their language in front of the matriarch. The eccentric little old lady impression would later be seen to camouflage a couple of bombs rather more devastating than the F variety.
Gilly, apart from hoarding carrier bags and boxes, from deliveries of various goods, and striving for perfection, was prone to burning her cooking and spilling things; at every small disaster breaking out into exaggerated forced laughter. Once again, this facade of tetchy jollity would be shown to be the cover for a dark secret.
Gilly, Andrea Irvine; Eileen, Julia Dearden also share a mother/daughter moment.
As already mentioned, Jenny revealed her, not too shocking, secret quite early on and spent the rest of the time, getting more drunk and trying to reconcile with Muireann, as their mother/daughter relationship was not too solid either.
Obviously the party disintegrated into a total shambles finally culminating in further, far more serious, revelations, which I will obviously not reveal.
I thought that the premise for the play, written by Karis Kelly and directed by Katie Posner, was very cleverly executed, removing the audience from their comfort zone of thinking that this was a straight forward generation gap comedy, and taking us somewhere very much darker.
The acting was top notch, each player displaying the chemistry and tension between family members which you will probably be able to identify with, even if not to such an extreme level. It made me grateful not to have one!
Consumed is at Leeds Playhouse until Saturday, 13th September, after which it goes to Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford and then Sheffield. For more details, and to buy tickets, please go to https://painesplough.com/productions/consumed/
To see what else is coming to Leeds Playhouse and to obtain tickets, it is https://www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on/
Photographs by Pamela Raith. Feature image from Leeds Playhouse.
Tyke It To The Limit 