EdFringe Review: My English Persian Kitchen

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Isabella Nefar is utterly sensational in this World Premiere of Hannah Khalil’s fragrant ‘My English Persian Kitchen’. The prepossessing confidence with which Nefar chops, cooks, and assembles a delicious pot of Persian ‘Ash-e Reshteh’ (Think onions, lentils, noodles, herbs and other tasty ingredient) whilst embodying a story of trauma, flight, and resettlement is astounding.

Whilst Khalil obviously isn’t the first playwright to conjure memories from the kitchen or cooking pot, ‘My English Persian Kitchen’ swaps metaphor for reality with a fully equipped, fully functional kitchen complete with sharp knives, a hob, and a fridge-freezer.

The result is utterly immersive, indeed inescapable as steam rises from pots along with phantoms of our host’s past. I say our host, because Nefar’s survivor of an abusive, controlling, and manifestly dangerous Iranian husband, is aware of her audience. With the lights low, and the glow of the hotplate, the play is an oddly intimate experience.

However, ‘My English Persian Kitchen’ isn’t just a spellbinding story told to the rhythm of chopping knives and the percussion of sizzling onions. Over the 80 minutes, Nefar’s cook seeks the comforting phantoms of her lost home and the virtues of a nation which still sees far more women graduate college than men. Iranian women don’t know how to cook, she assures us, ‘they’re too busy.’

It’s a story told through ingredients and evocative, homely storytelling. Into this idyll breaks the nightmare of a husband who began sweet before turning extremely sour and controlling. Trauma written into her body re-emerges in convulsive turns accompanied by ground-shaking bass interventions. There’s a voice in that hum, a voice that promised no escape.

However, the hope of a new life here, wherever we are ultimately prevails. It’s an imperfect peace marked by the absent family who didn’t manage to get out when she did. However a new community can be found, and new friends can be made. Ingredients not available in Tescos can be substituted. It’s not all she hoped, it’s a different hope.

‘My English Persian Kitchen’ finds some of that hope in a gentle thread of humour. Whether it’s puncturing Western preconceptions of Iranian life, or hiding from her nightmares in the fridge, it’s ok to laugh. It’s sometimes better than crying – not always – but sometimes.

As I come to the end of this review, I find that I’m fonder of the play than ever. I began with huge admiration, but now I find myself wanting to go back to experience it again, not least for the delightful, and gently celebratory finale. In the end this is a love story, or more accurately a story about love, told through food. It’s a love actively shared with the audience, and that makes ‘My English Persian Kitchen’ a singular experience this Edinburgh Fringe. Oh, and Isabella Nefar is a star.

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