Cooking Up Memory and Belonging in My English Persian Kitchen

★★★★★

Photo by Ellie Kutttz

There are few things that can transport you home quite like cooking. It awakens memory in ways words rarely can, and My English Persian Kitchen captures that connection between taste and identity with exquisite sensitivity.

Written by Hannah Khalil and inspired by the life of cookery author Atoosa Sepehr, the play tells the story of a woman rebuilding her life after fleeing Iran. In a small kitchen far from home, she turns to the food of her childhood to rediscover who she is. Khalil’s writing is intimate, measured and deeply humane, drawing meaning from the simplest of acts: chopping herbs, stirring a pot, waiting for flavours to develop.

The staging is stripped back to a single working kitchen, where Isabella Nefar commands the space with both ease and intensity. She is a captivating presence, wry and playful one moment, quietly haunted the next. Her physicality mirrors the act of cooking itself: patient, purposeful, full of care. When she begins to prepare Ash-e Reshteh, a thick Persian noodle soup, the theatre fills with the scent of onions, herbs and warmth. It is impossible not to be drawn in.

Chris White’s direction matches that simplicity with precision. Light shifts almost imperceptibly as the story moves between memory and present. The refrigerator at the back glows a cold white, a constant reminder of what has been lost, while the rest of the kitchen glows in amber tones of safety and nostalgia. It is a production that proves how minimalism can heighten emotion when every detail is intentional.

If there is one area that feels slightly mild, it is in the urgency of the more perilous moments. When the protagonist flees her husband or fears her passport will be blocked at immigration, the tension simmers rather than burns. A sharper sense of danger would have added the spice that the story momentarily lacks, sharpening the contrast between refuge and risk.

But the overall experience is extraordinary, warm, tactile and profoundly human. When the dish is finally ready, the audience is invited to share a small bowl of the Ash-e Reshteh that Nefar has cooked before our eyes. It is a moment of quiet generosity that turns theatre into communion. My English Persian Kitchen does not just tell a story, it feeds you, body and soul.

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Tour Dates

Soho Theatre Tue 30 Sep – Sat 11 Oct, 7pm (2.30pm matinees)

Bristol Old VicTue 14 – Sat 18 Oct, 7.30pm (2.30pm matinees)

Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, DublinTue 21 – Wed 22 Oct, 8pm

Lyric Theatre Belfast (presented by Belfast International Arts Festival)Fri 24 – Sat 25 Oct, 8pm