Out of the frying pan – a sold-out run at this year's Edinburgh Fringe – and into the fire of the Soho Theatre, writer Hannah Khalil and director Chris White bring My English Persian Kitchen, their inventive adaptation of cookery book author Atoosa Sepehr's life-story to London for a three-week run.
The one-woman performance is already underway as the audience filters into the intimate room. Our protagonist, played with equal parts chilling intensity and genuine warmth by Isabella Nefar, is dicing onions underneath a kitchen pendant light while singing to herself in Farsi.
The first line of the play stretches the fourth wall, when Nefar asks if we are surprised to see her cooking: for many it may be the first time they have seen the Persian dish ash reshteh being made on the stage, unless they attended Masterchef the Musical, but this isn't what the play's heroine is getting at. Instead, we are told that Iranian women don't cook, that more Iranian women go to university than men – and are just as successful.
While this is a reality accepted and embraced by many in Iran, the main character's father for one, it sparks jealousy in others. Flashbacks of the abusive relationship that she is forced to escape are drip fed to the audience through Nefar's interactions with on-stage props, ingredients and utensils. These flashbacks are indicated by stark and sudden drops in lighting. The way Nefar's character becomes almost possessed by her ex-husband's words and actions is a powerful exploration of the power that trauma holds.
As the fragments of back-story come together, so does the dish being made on stage, the connections between the ingredients and the protagonist's memories of home, both good and bad, making sure this novel staging doesn't cross the line into gimmick. Instead, the theme of food acting as a connection to the life she leaves behind and a way of finding a new community in London makes the live cooking aspect almost essential.
There is, however, an ongoing struggle between style and substance throughout the performance. Extensive repetition of dialogue, changing tenses and some more on-the-nose symbolism can make the play feel a bit overcooked.
This does nevertheless allow the work to showcase to students the diverse range of techniques that can be achieved with simple staging and lighting effects, as well as interesting ideas on how to make theatre a sensory experience. If the fourth wall is stretched at the start of the play, it is shattered by the end, with the audience representing the new community that Nefar's character has found; we are invited to taste the dish that has been prepared in front of us over the course of the evening. The word polymath gets thrown around a lot, but any actor who can serve up such a multi-faceted performance and tasty meal on the same night is worthy of the title.