My English Persian Kitchen

My English Persian Kitchen comes to Connaught Studio on Tuesday 9 March, with the curtain going up at 7:30pm. It's a play by the award-winning writer Hannah Khalil, written from the story of Atoosa Sepehr, and it does something you don't often see in a theatre: it brings live cooking onto the stage.

The story follows a woman who has lost everything. To find her way back, she reaches for the tastes and aromas of her mother's kitchen, recreating the dishes of her childhood and her homeland right there in front of the audience. Around that cooking, she builds a new life and a new community, so the food isn't just a backdrop — it's the thing the whole play is built on.

It's not a new piece. It first played at the Traverse Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and was produced by Soho Theatre and Traverse Theatre. One reviewer called it 'a thoroughly flavourful feast of a play that transports its audiences, through its aromatic delights, into an Iranian kitchen', which gives you a good sense of what to expect: the smells of the cooking are part of the experience.

It's a 65-minute show, so it's a relatively short evening. Tickets start from £18.25, and there's an age guidance of 16+ recommended.