My English Persian Kitchen at Traverse Theatre – Edinburgh Fringe review

Food seems to be a recurring theme at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe – there’s even a whole production dedicated to spam.

It’s also the backbone of Hannah Khalil’s new play, directed by Chris White. You notice it the moment you step towards the intimate studio space at the Traverse Theatre – wafts of garlic, onions and spices all proving tantalising, teasing a culinary and personal journey. Smell is an often untapped but incredibly potent tool in live entertainment – one that is put to excellent effect by White here as themes of memory, tradition, gender and escapism are all mixed and merged together.

Khalil’s play, performed solo by Isabella Nefar, is based on the real-life experiences of food writer Atoosa Sepehr: it details an unnamed woman’s fraught, turbulent escape from Iran, leaving behind so many bitter experiences while launching her into an unfamiliar world in the UK.

Told in non-linear fashion on Pip Terry’s Cotswold Company kitchen set, Nefar cooks up a traditional Iranian dish – ash reshteh – with ingredients added as new narrative strands are revealed to the audience.

There is something subtly novel here. Khalil teases out the contradictions in cooking: a chance to explore deep-seated, powerful traditions within communities, while also a deeply gendered, often oppressive act. When the expectation is placed on women to cook for their husbands, should they feel any sense of joy in having to do so? What happens when these dishes are transported to foreign countries – serving up memories that both link to a dark past, but also to those you hold dearest.

Nefar’s warm, vibrant central performance provides an assured beating heart to the production, which is allowed to sizzle in all the right ways. After its Fringe run, I’m sure it’ll be dished up again on other UK stages in the not-too-distant future.