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Bangor playwright Karis Kelly\u2019s award-winning play Consumed, centred on intergenerational trauma and identity in Northern Ireland, will make its stage debut at Coventry\u2019s Belgrade Theatre in July 2025, with a UK tour and Edinburgh Fringe run to follow.<\/p>\n
Bangor-based playwright Karis Kelly is set to see their award-winning play Consumed<\/em> make its much-anticipated stage debut at The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry from July 25, 2025. The production marks a significant milestone for Kelly, whose work has been five years in development. Describing the moment as both gratifying and nerve-wracking, Kelly\u2019s play is a collaboration between Paines Plough, Belgrade Theatre, Sheffield Theatres, and the Women\u2019s Prize for Playwriting, which Consumed<\/em> won in 2022.<\/p>\n The play unfolds in a fictional Bangor home, described by Kelly as \u201cfull of hungry ghosts, with more than one skeleton in the closet.\u201d Set around a 90th birthday party, the drama brings together four generations of women from the same family, exploring the complex and often fraught dynamics beneath the surface. The story skilfully blends kitchen sink drama with elements of magical realism, featuring twists that challenge audience expectations. Kelly notes the pressure for the party to be perfect, which triggers ruptures that expose decades of tension. The cast includes notable Northern Irish talents such as Julia Dearden (known from Derry Girls<\/em>), Andrea Irvine (Blue Lights<\/em>), and Caoimhe Farren (The Woman in The Wall<\/em>), alongside newcomer Muireann N\u00ed Fhaog\u00e1in.<\/p>\n At its core, Consumed<\/em> grapples with themes of transgenerational trauma, particularly through compulsions related to food, alcohol, and shopping, representing what Kelly calls the \u201cbig black hole\u201d of addiction\u2014a void where love should be. The portrayal captures how this trauma passes through generations, shaping the characters’ behaviours in subtle and overt ways. This exploration is woven together with reflections on sectarianism, Irish national identity, and the post-Troubles and Brexit context that informs contemporary Northern Irish society. The youngest character, Muireann, mirrors Kelly\u2019s own experience of being raised in London but yearning to understand her Northern Irish heritage. <\/p>\n Kelly\u2019s creative journey with Consumed<\/em> began in early 2020 during a writing retreat, just before the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns halted theatre productions worldwide. Despite the challenges, including a personal diagnosis of OCD that led Kelly to investigate the nature of inherited trauma, the play\u2019s themes took shape with the support of academic research from Queen\u2019s University Belfast on transgenerational trauma. Kelly also credits persistence through years of rejection before winning the Women\u2019s Prize for Playwriting as crucial to their ongoing commitment to writing. <\/p>\n Since winning the prize, Consumed<\/em> has gained momentum with planned performances beyond Coventry, including a 20-performance run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe starting July 31, followed by a UK tour. Kelly acknowledges the difficulty in securing programming for Northern Ireland, highlighting the hope that the play can eventually open in Belfast or even their hometown of Bangor.<\/p>\n The play\u2019s ending was recently revised to offer more hope, a conscious decision by Kelly and director Katie Posner to counterbalance the world\u2019s prevailing bleakness\u2014a sentiment reflecting theatre\u2019s evolving responsibility in challenging times.<\/p>\n In addition to Consumed<\/em>, Kelly is developing other projects, including a TV series with Two Cities (known for Blue Lights<\/em>) and a new musical play titled Black Magic Ops<\/em>. This latter work, a Celtic metal musical set during the 1970s Northern Irish ‘Satanic panics,’ explores the cultural and societal impacts of the Troubles through the lens of a teenage band, continuing Kelly\u2019s thematic focus on trauma and conflict.<\/p>\n