Review: MY ENGLISH PERSIAN KITCHEN, Soho Theatre

Content Warning: References to abuse.

Some Soho Theatre audience members at My English Persian Kitchen over the next month may be more enticed by what comes after the show than by the show itself.

That’s because Hannah Khalil’s one-woman show has the distinction of featuring onstage cooking – performer Isabella Nefar prepares the Iranian noodle soup ash-e reshteh every night and serves it to the audience at the end of the show. However, scratch beneath the (delicious) surface, and there’s profound storytelling that withstands any allegations of theatrical gimmick.

The protagonist – unnamed, but based loosely on the nutritionist and cookbook author Atoosa Sepehr – has fled an abusive marriage, and has left behind all she knows in Isfahan for a new life in London. Khalil’s writing doesn’t pretend that any of the wounds are healed, and so the character’s diligent meal prep is interspersed with visceral, non-linear flashbacks to physical abuse and threats of suicide from her ex.

Nefar is a bold, deliberate performer, her every move etching out, almost balletically, both her moments of courage and her outpourings of fear. The lighting design (by Marty Langthorne) is also a weapon in this production’s arsenal, thrusting our central character violently in and out of her memories.

Nefar and Khalil also makes cooking into a deeply physical act – Nefar handles an onion with great reverence, hides her entire body in a fridge, and uses her kitchen utensils variously to express pain, frustration, tranquility. Khalil tells the audience early on that many successful and educated Iranian women wouldn’t tell their husbands they enjoying cooking – the joy taken in the kitchen here, the running gag about putting too much oil in the pan, is an act of feminist reclamation.

My English Persian Kitchen is at its strongest when it’s tightly focused, on this character’s relationship to food and womanhood. The show’s frantic beginning in medias res, when Nefar’s character is racing to get to the airport before her ex-husband cancels her passport, is an excellent rendering of how trauma can unleash itself at the most unlikely moments. This tension is nicely offset by heartfelt monologues addressed to the audience, usually to do with the food our character is preparing and sometimes accompanied by a chance to smell a herb or spice.

Later episodes, by contrast, lack this tonal balance and cause the show to lose some momentum. Some poorly paced forays into the protagonist’s childhood lead to a segue about her evolving relationship with the novel Wuthering Heights, which veers too far away from the show’s central ideas.

When we come to dine at the end, though, perching in the stalls while we stir in the kashk yoghurt and crispy onions, the culinary element doesn’t feel like a cheap novelty at all. Instead, we’re eating the results of the protagonist’s toil, as she begins to adjust to life in London and invites 40 of her neighbours over for dinner. It’s an immersive experience that justifies its gimmick – we’ve suffered along with our lead character, and now we eat.

My English Persian Kitchen plays at Soho Theatre until 11 October

Photo credits: Ellie Kurttz