Great performances from the four actors in this darkly comic drama exploring the interplay and acrimony between generations. Rating
Good
Karis Kelly‘s play has four generations of women from a Northern Irish family getting together to celebrate the great grandmother/grandmother/mother’s 90th birthday, but repressed family resentments boil over and lead to some startling revelations.
Designer Lily Arnold has created an excellent set for this production. The action takes place in the family kitchen and this is the most detailed and realistic set I’ve ever seen in the intimate Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse. The oven is cooking, the tumble dryer is on, there are cookery books, recycling, magnets on the fridge. Through an archway there are stairs to the first floor and the front door. It’s very impressive.
The birthday girl is Great Grandmother Eileen, who is played brilliantly by Julia Dearden. She starts the play on stage alone. Eileen is sharp, domineering, demanding and foul-mouthed, dropping the F bomb frequently to great comic effect. She is also a staunch protestant proud to live in Northern Ireland, not Ireland. It is a scene stealing performance from Dearden, possibly because she gets all the best lines. When Eileen speaks everyone listens, including the audience.
Her daughter, Gilly, played convincingly by Andrea Irvine, has controlled patience with her mother but seems close to losing it at any point. She is distracted and burdened by making sure the party goes well. Gilly’s daughter, Jenny (Caoimhe Farren) and 14 year old granddaughter, Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin) have travelled from their London home for the occasion. Both actors give very strong performances. Farren’s physical comedy is especially effective.
Once the four are together it is very clear that there is plenty of long-harboured resentment and bitterness. Jenny asks where her father is and Gilly is peeved that it’s been three years since the last visit, suggesting she can’t be that interested. The interplay between the generations is well written and very well acted. From a starting point of almost forced jollity, there is a gradual buildup of acrimony and indignation interspersed with some very dark comedy. Interestingly, the worst recriminations are aimed at the generations immediately above and below. So Gilly and Jenny have the most angst, but are also on the receiving end from both their mothers and daughters.
The difference in both parenting styles between the generations and how their marriages were conducted are fiercely debated, with faults and errors clear to see. Jenny is overprotective of Muireann because she feels she wasn’t protected enough. Muireann calls Jenny a self-centred lonely drunk. None of them will acknowledge their own shortcomings or try to understand why others behaved as they did, so no progress is made.
Muireann is an activist. She doesn’t eat meat because she has heard that the terror of the slain animal can transfer to the person who consumes the meat. She also explains that baby girls are born with all the eggs they will release in their lifetime already in their bodies so it follows that generations of women were inside their mothers and grandmothers during pregnancy, thus explaining the show’s title.
The action finally resolves into two major reveals. The first is the elephant in the room for most of the play and is an explosive and shocking conclusion. The second is very well performed but feels unnecessary – there has been no suggestion of it in the narrative so far and while it is extremely powerful, it does little to take the plot further and it feels as though Kelly just wanted to end her play on a moment of power.
Written by Karis Kelly
Directed by Katie Posner
Set and costumes designed by Lily Arnold
Sound designed and composed by Beth Duke
Lighting designed by Guy Hoare
Consumed plays at Sheffield Theatres until Saturday 11 October.
