We enter to actress Isabella Nefar preparing the mise en place. The faint scent of cut red onion is just dicernable, becoming more apparent once I notice the small purple pile of them neatly placed on the stage’s central countertop. In the murmur of low voices before the lights dim, Isabella’s knife claps against the wooden board beneath it. She is chopping herbs.
My English Persian Kitchen is a show written by established playwright Hannah Khalil, about a woman caught between two places: her home in Iran which she has fled from, and her kitchen island in London, where she now lives. These two disparate locales are emulsified through the act of preparing a traditional Iranian meal. As she cooks live on stage, the play’s heroine allows the ingredients she uses- saffron, dried mint, garlic- to transport her between worlds, back and forth between the past which haunts her and her safe(er) present.
Masterfully staged and brilliantly acted, the poetry of this production is sublime. Both history and recipe feed into each other, become one another, as the show’s domestic setting allows for a deeply personal and real exploration of home and country. Hyper-sensorial and deeply moving, the play commands much more engagement from the audience than a more standard theatrical experience ever could. By hearing, smelling, and finally tasting the fruit of the production, I feel much more tethered to it. It is tangible and familiar in a way another telling of the story could not be.
It’s a very relatable way to go about telling a serious and very culturally specific life story. Surely everyone has been in an active kitchen. We understand its rhythms, the steps required to make something delicious, or at least edible.
But My English Persian Kitchen is not merely cooking for the sake of it. It scrambles these familiar sequences and presents them to us anew: cut the red onions- though they are not only red, they are the colour of dried blood. Be careful whilst chopping. Make sure you have the strength to prevent the knife from pointing towards you. Most importantly, you mustn’t splatter the oil used to fry them- their disruptive sound will take you somewhere you don’t wish to go.
My English Persian Kitchen, Times Vary, Traverse Theatre, until August 25.
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/my-english-persian-kitchen
