Rising actress Muireann Ní Fhaogáin spoke to David Hennessy about Karis Kelly’s Consumed which is currently onstage in London at the Park Theatre.
Muireann Ní Fhaogáin, from Inchicore in Dublin, was just about to finish her studies at LAMDA when she landed the role of Muireann in Karis Kelly’s Consumed for her professional stage debut.
The play depicts four generations of Northern Irish women reunited under one roof for a 90th birthday party.
Katie Posner directs a cast made up of Julia Dearden (Cyprus Avenue, Derry Girls), Caoimhe Farren (The Ferryman in the West End, Derry Girls and The Woman in the Wall), Andrea Irvine (Blue Lights) and Muireann herself.
It is this team that have already been lauded bringing the story to last year’s Edinburgh Fringe as well as venues in Coventry, Sheffield, Guildford and Leeds.
Described as a pitch black and twisted comedy, Consumed deals with themes such as dysfunctional family dynamics, generational trauma and national boundaries.
The show has finally made it to London with its current run at Park Theatre.
This is somewhat of a homecoming for Muireann has she has been based in London for years.
It also comes fresh from its run at Belfast’s Lyric. Muireann took time out during that run to chat to the Irish World.
What has it been like taking the show to Belfast?
“It’s been incredible.
“The audiences have been brilliant.
“We did the show for three months last year.
“We went to Edinburgh for a month and then we toured different venues in the UK for two months afterwards, Belfast is definitely where we’ve got the most laughs at unexpected moments but also gasps and very strong reactions afterwards.
“It’s been incredible to have it come home, especially for Karis.
“I know it means so much for the play to be back here in Belfast where it was written to be.
“It’s my first production on the island of Ireland so it means a lot as well for me.
“It’s incredible.”
As you say you have taken it around the UK taking in Edinburgh, Sheffield, Guildford and Coventry, it’s also going to be special to take it to London, isn’t it?
“Absolutely, yeah.
“It was joked about when the transfers were announced that half of the characters live in Belfast and half of the characters live in London.
“Especially playing the London Irish character, knowing how much that means to a London Irish audience to have their Irishness recognised and celebrated in that way, I’m really excited.
“I know it means a lot for Karis as well.
“I’ve been living in London for the last four years now so I feel more at home there than I do here sometimes.
“It will be really exciting to get it to the Park.”
Take us back to your first reading of Consumed. What was it about the play or character that spoke to you?
“My first reading of it I called my mam afterwards and I was just telling her, ‘We need to go and see this play’.
“The character Muireann I thought it was a mistake first because that’s my name and I know so few other people called Muireann that I was kind of reading it going, ‘No way, my agent must have put it through slightly skew ways where she has my name’.
“And then I was reading the play and going, ‘Not only is her name Muireann but she reminds me of my 14 year old self in so many ways, her kind of neurodivergence and anxieties’.
“She’s a product of being from a generation where we have such a bombardment of information at all times for good things and bad things.
“She’s so fascinated by the world and facts and grasping onto bits of information to try and understand herself but she’s also incredibly overwhelmed most of the time by all of that.
“I think she’s just beautifully written.
“All of the women are.
“Karis has done this phenomenal job of writing four completely different generations and four very different women and putting in all of the messy, ugly parts and all of the raw terribleness but also all of the love and the strength of them all.
“First reading this play, I obviously assumed I wouldn’t get it.
“It’s my first job and so it was just a special play to have gotten to read.”
You say it is your first job, did it take you by surprise coming along just as you graduated from LAMDA?
“It really has been very surreal.
“I actually left drama school a month early to do the show so it almost felt like an extension of training in a lot of ways.
“The other actors are all phenomenal and then not only getting to work with them and learn from them but getting to tour it and go to different venues and see the difference a city can make to the way the audience reacts.
“We had the Traverse in Edinburgh which was this huge, kind of sloping 400 seat venue, to then in Sheffield, I think it was around 200 seats and it was a lot more intimate.
“Now the Park is going to be not only more intimate but also we’re going to have audience on three sides who will really be inside the kitchen with us.
“It’s really felt like just an extension of training in the most incredible way.”
Have the reactions been overwhelming wherever you have gone?
“You do tend to get that sometimes.
“We had someone who was heavily impacted by the conflict in the north of Ireland who sent a letter.
“I know Karis has received countless things from different people and it has been very affecting.
“But venue to venue, it was interesting because some venues were just a lot louder and you’d get laughs at moments that you really thought were very serious and some venues, they were very watchful.
“Even in Edinburgh, we changed time every day so we could be on with a 7pm ‘have been watching shows all day, might have been in and out of the pub’ crowd or a 10am crowd at the beginning of their day of festival viewing and the way that that impacts it has been fascinating because the show itself changes depending on the audience.
“They’re almost like our fifth character.”
The story centres around these four women and the planned birthday celebrations but as soon as they are reunited, tensions aren’t long coming to the surface…
“I suppose it’s the way with any family.
“Once you get home and the doors close and you’re not on show, there’s the little jabs and jibes.
“And for my character, it’s always interesting because I don’t know this house.
“I haven’t been here in three years when she would have been 11 and even then, it’s not an environment I’ve grown up in so I get to be an observer and as an actor, that’s also really interesting because you get to watch these other actors who’ve done so much work on their characters interact with this years of history.
“It’s fascinating.”
The thing about your character is that she says it out, doesn’t she? While the older generations are maybe used to talking around things or even keeping quiet, she just says it..
“Yeah, and I think she’s a very empathetic person as well.
“She’s not saying it to be cruel or to be harsh.
“I think she just has that kind of innocence that gives her this beautiful black and white view of the world in ways and she sees it without the kind of imposed structures of life, I think.
“She very much is, ‘Well, this isn’t fair. This doesn’t make sense’.
“And she’ll talk so directly and she sees things with such an open heart that it makes it easier for her to talk about things but also, I think, is to her detriment sometimes.
“You can see how she struggles.
“It’s like there’s a code that she hasn’t been taught.
“I myself am quite blunt and I say things even with the best of intentions.
“I’ll just say what I think and it comes out too quickly and then you realise, ‘Oh, this is a moment where we’re meant to be quiet’.
“I think she’s beautifully written for that.”
Is there an element of neurodiversity with her, did you mention?
“Yeah, it was very much just in discussion in the room with Karis.
“I myself have ADHD.
“Caoimhe, who plays my mam, has lines explaining that there’s all sorts of different things that we could be talking about with intergenerational drama.
“It can link in with ADHD and OCD and all sorts of different neurodiversity.
“With Muireann there’s not a specific diagnosis and so her brain works quite similarly to mine at times because that’s what I know and the hyper fixations and spaciness and, ‘Oh wait, hang on, someone has not understood where I’m going. How can I try and relink that for them?’
“Even the way she talks, we have very similar habits of rambling on for a bit long.”
Being from different generations, all the characters in the play have different experiences and different attitudes to their Irishness..
“Yeah, it’s dealt with so interestingly by Karis in that we are all from the same island and dealing with the same trauma.
“Eileen and Gilly identify as Ulster Scots. That’s their identity and it’s very strong and they have a very lovely connection with that.
“But Jenny, who has gone to London, just decides ‘I’m Irish’ because in England, I think it becomes simplified. You are from the island of Ireland and so people don’t tend to ask questions if you say that you’re Irish.
“Then Muireann, she is Irish.
“She might be the only one on stage with an English accent but she is the only one who will very strongly go, ‘I am Irish, my genes are Irish, my body is Irish. This is the land that my body is from’.
“I think it’s very respectful of each identity while acknowledging how intertwined they also can be which I think is very important because everyone can see themselves reflected in this who is from Belfast or the surrounding North.”
I believe your character gets told at one point that she knows nothing of the Troubles having grown up outside of Ireland and post- Good Friday Agreement. However, that statement can never be true when there is such a thing as generational trauma..
“I think it’s interesting within the play in that the experiences are so different and so none of us can quite understand each other because we will never have lived what the others lived whether that’s where they’ve lived or when they lived but the stress and the tension and the repercussions and the echoes of it all live in all of us.
“I think it’s being respectful of both the fact that we will never understand but also that we all can kind of relate.”
Consumed deals with serious topics but also has a lot of humour in it. That’s the very Northern Irish trait, isn’t it, to deal with serious things with a dark humour?
“Yeah, it’s beautiful.
“Getting to work with Caoimhe and Andrea and Julia and the humour that they bring to the roles is lovely because I think you need that.
“You need the lightness, you need to be able to laugh in the face of the worst things ever because they live beside each other. Fear and laughter are so closely intertwined.”
Laughter is also a survival mechanism. Is what people had to do to survive a big theme within the play?
“Oh, absolutely.
“It’s one of the key themes that has stuck with me the most because we’re not that far away from times that are as full of conflict as the past in this play is.
“Being able to face things happening without shutting down is so important and the way it’s put into this play, it’s really, really shaped the way I think of things.
“We are part of a generation now where we have information just handed to us every day and looking at it and taking it in and absorbing it is so difficult but so, so important.”
Food is key to the story, isn’t it? How different characters relate to food is really telling, isn’t it?
“I mean the way that it’s used to try and take care of people or whether it’s eating disorders and trying to avoid things in order to quell anxiety.
“There’s a lovely moment in the play where Jilly, who is my grandmother, offers some sweets and it’s with the best intentions ever and she does it so beautifully.
“Every night she offers these sweets and it’s her version of caring and my character just can’t take it and it’s watching that care just constantly come in the wrong form.”
Would you say the characters are all burdened by something?
“Absolutely, I think for me that’s where Consumed comes from because they’re all completely consumed by something and I think they’re all also incredibly strong and powerful women.
“It is so beautiful to see a play where you have four brilliant, messy, strong, caring, violent sometimes women.
“They’re all capable of almost anything and whether good or bad I think it all comes from a huge place of love and want for love.
“I find more in it every time I look at the play.”
Do you think it’s a rarity as a play in that it depicts Northern Irish women as they are in real life, something that hasn’t often been done before..
“I think so definitely.
“Andrea and Julia have both commented at different points that it’s so lovely to have roles like this for Northern Irish women and the way Karis has written these powerful, powerful women is something that I just hope continues.
“I hope this doesn’t become the play with strong Northern Irish women.
“I hope it becomes one of very, very many.”
Are they also haunted, the women in the play?
“Yeah, absolutely.
“Karris had said before that this is a house full of hungry ghosts.
“I remember it just really stuck with me because it is these kind of haunted figures just looking for something.
“They’re all really hungry whether it’s for love or acknowledgement or comfort.
“There’s a real reason why they are all in this kitchen together looking for whatever it is that they’re missing.”
When did you know that you wanted to act?
“I’d say I was maybe about seven or eight.
“If you had asked me at seven or eight what I would be doing, I would have told you I would be living in London being an actor so the fact that that is actually the case is very, very surreal and very strange to me.
“But I think if you had asked me at any age, that would have been the goal.”
Didn’t you start your rehearsals for the play at the London Irish Centre, what was that like?
“Yeah, I loved it.
“I really thought it was brilliant.
“It was the height of summer so I would cycle.
“I was living in Hammersmith at the time and I’d cycle from Hammersmith up to Camden to get a bit of sun and every day before we’d go into rehearsals, Michael D Higgins’ big portrait would be there smiling at us as we went up the stairs.
“It was really lovely.
“I didn’t have much connections to a London Irish community while I was in drama school so having that be the first time I went to the London Irish Centre and I was finally rehearsing for my first job with an all Irish female cast, it was surreal in the most beautiful way.”
Back to Consumed, what would you say makes it so ‘special’?
“It’s a really important show at the minute.
“The world is so big and so scary and so full of conflict and stress and this show, anytime I get bad news, getting to do this show brings me so much hope that I really hope that that’s what it does for audiences in London.
“That kind of feeling of hope in the face of trauma and conflict is something that I think is so important.”
Consumed is at Park Theatre until 18 April. For more information and to book, click here.
