Review by Beth Bowden
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Walking into My English Persian Kitchen at Soho Theatre, I know we’re in for a feast. And boy - this show didn’t disappoint - it was a creative and culinary delight.
Spread out in front of actor Isabella Nefar are chopped onions, herbs, spices, and a full working kitchen and fridge. Something delicious is being created, cooked, stirred as the story is being told…and the theatre smells great. She explains to us that she’s making Ash-e reshteh, a Persian Noodle and Herb Soup, and I feel like I’ve been transported into a combination theatre-cooking show.
It is no mean feat to cook onstage. It’s like magic - because somehow the play is perfectly timed with each stage of the recipe. Isabella Nefar does an absolutely stellar job - somehow managing to balance cooking a whole, incredibly complex meal alongside acting for an audience? This show takes the term ‘triple threat’ to new heights, as she balances teaching us the recipe, acting, and dynamic movement. It’s impressive and amazingly throughout the course of the show nothing ever burns! There is also, I reflect, great pleasure in watching someone delicately drain lentils onstage.
The story, beautifully adapted into a play by Hannah Khali, is inspired by real best-selling food author Atoosa Sepehr. It transfers to Soho Theatre after a sell-out run at Edinburgh Fringe, and traces Atoosa’s journey to the UK after leaving Tehran to escape her abusive husband. Hannah’s writing sensitively captures the long-lasting effects of domestic violence and PSTD.
The shadows of the abuse Atoosa experienced weaved throughout and the impacts clearly made - in the sharpness of the knife, in the scaling hot water that can burn, the voices that follow you long after you leave a violent situation, and the insidious loss of self esteem over time. As a young woman, I am deeply moved by Antoosa’s story, her resilience, and the held conversation around marriage, domestic violence and intersectional feminism.
Onions sizzle, water bubbles, and saffron ices as she talks to us - her face framed through the light of the hob and the rising steam. The set design by Pip Terry, and lighting by Marty Langthorne, is clever and stunning - light streaming out of the fridge, drawers, tins and jars - as if the drawers, the recipe and the ingredients hold light, and hold hope. It’s clever because, at its heart, My English Persian Kitchen is about food - and how recipes and cooking can transport you to the past, to your memories, to other countries. For Atoosa, the food connects her to Iran and her family, and is part of her diasporic experience. She finds healing, hope and community through cooking, and through re-discovering her family recipes.
There is also a strong sense of a community built quickly and warmly between us all. Isabella invites us into the process - letting us smell the turmeric, rub herbs in between our hands - and there is a recipe that we can take a picture of at the end (which I will be making!). I feel like I have been invited into a friend's kitchen, and Isabella Nefar is captivating, warm and often very funny. She’s a fantastic storyteller. It is a fantastic story.
Food, community, healing - it is a story we can all connect to - and this show definitely gets the recipe right.
My English Persian Kitchen plays at Soho Theatre until October 5th
For tickets and information visit https://sohotheatre.com/events/my-english-persian-kitchen-3/
Photos by Ellie Kurttz
The set design by Pip Terry, and lighting by Marty Langthorne URL