Isabella Nefar gives a fine, engaging performance as a cook speaking to the audience about the meal she is cooking and the personal life of the character she is playing.
With more than a dozen ingredients and numerous steps in preparing the dish of ash reshteh, there is certainly relief in her voice at the end when she announces it is ready for us all to eat.
Earlier, there might have been a concern that it would be undercooked given there was a delay in turning the stove on that one of the tech crew remedied by walking round the theatre till he could flick the wall switch on.
Maybe that is a metaphor for the play. The theme of her personal life is the difficulty of a domineering husband who she escapes by fleeing from Iran to London. However the husband, the relationship and her reasons for fleeing the country are very thinly sketched. They are alluded to by connecting her situation to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, her favourite childhood book that her gran translated for her.
Sudden pulsating sounds and changes to the lighting are very effective in evoking a disturbing sense of danger when she briefly speaks about her husband, but it is too little for us to understand more than the basics of their relationship or its breakdown.
Among the friction points she has had with her husband is the responsibility for cooking. A couple of times, she mentions that in Iran, there are more women in university than men, and that consequently, the women don’t make meals because they are too busy working.
After a call from her husband makes her fear he will have her passport cancelled, she races to the airport, warning her mother not to hug her too much in case it makes officials suspect she is not returning.
Although initially living in the UK has its downside, that includes food poisoning and a neighbour knocking on her door to check she hasn’t got children or plans to have any, she tells us, “I love London. I love the people,” and is cooking food for 40 of her neighbours.
Those audience members who like to watch someone cooking a meal and flavouring the conversation with a touch of personal history should enjoy My English Persian Kitchen. And as a bonus, after the show, they can share in the food being prepared.