Tag: Hannah Khalil

My English Persian Kitchen by Hannah Khalil, Soho Theatre, 30 September 2024

This show is an excellent and unusual experience in the theatre. Based on a true story, Isabella Nefar is superb as a young woman who escapes to England from an abusive marriage in Iran. She doesn’t find London life easy either, but takes solace in cooking Persian food to remind herself of the home she might never see again.

While telling her gruelling story, she also cooks Ash-e Reshteh; Persian noodle and herb soup, which after the show she serves to anyone in the audience who fancies it…which was almost everyone.

Aware that the play was this kind of thing, we got to the Soho Theatre a little early to try to get front seats. We knew that the visibility would be fine just about anywhere, but the smells would be subject to the inverse-square law and we wanted to smell this play.

We ran into a couple of people we knew while queuing: Sara Amini, whom we had met in Stratford when we attended a talk about the play Englsh in May:

English by Sanaz Toossi, The Other Place, 13 May 2024

…and also our friend Jacquie from the Boston Manor tennis courts, which was a little more of a surprise in this context.

Anyway, we got the front row seats we fancied and were entranced by the short show.

Unusually for us, we ventured to the theatre by tube rather than car, as Soho is such a awkward place for driving. A points failure near North Acton confounded us, sending our West Acton bound tube to Hanger Lane instead, making our return journey a little fraught. Fortunately we’d had a bowl of soup to sustain us and hadn’t left our dinner cooking at home when we went out!

Contemplating the yummy soup, not the journey home

This show previewed at Soho before a very well-received Edinburgh run and then a short reprise at Soho. It was very well received by the formal reviewers – click here for plenty of links.

Hopefully My English Persian Kitchen will be revived elsewhere, so that more people can get to see it, smell it and eat it.

A Museum In Baghdad by Hannah Khalil, Royal Shakespeare Company, Swan Theatre, 14 October 2019

Gertrude Bell, 1909, in what is now Iraq

Janie and I saw a preview of this superb production at the Swan, about a week before press night.

We became fascinated with Gertrude Bell when we saw the film Letters From Baghdad and a panel discussion about it a couple of years ago at the Curzon.

Letters From Baghdad Followed By Panel Discussion, Curzon Soho, 27 April 2017

Hence our enthusiasm to decamp to Stratford and see A Museum In Baghdad more or less as soon as it opened. The RSC explains and describes the piece in its resources here.

Playwright Hannah Khalil explains her thinking behind the piece here:

The following trailer explains little but does give a flavour of the atmospheric music and sensescape of the piece:

Janie and I loved the play/production and came away from the show buzzing from the quality of ideas, drama, sounds and emotions we experienced at The Swan.

Janie tends to dislike plays that overlap time periods (this play is set in 1926 and 2006) and mess with the linear telling of stories, not least because she often finds that confusing. But this one works so well and certainly worked for her, such that the overlapping of the two time-settings just added a little to the chaos of the situations being depicted, without interfering with the narrative line.

The production runs at The Swan for a few months before transferring to the Kiln in London. We have not yet been to the latter since its refurb, so wonder how well the piece will work there. It certainly worked wonderfully for us in the three-sided Swan setting. It certainly should appeal to Kiln audiences.

All of the acting was top notch, as was the design, sound and movement. Hard to single out performances, but Emma Fielding, Rendah Heywood and Rasoul Saghir were exceptional.

We were grateful to be staying just across the road in The Arden, as the heavens were in open mode that evening. We debriefed over a snack supper there. I believe I spotted Mark Ravenhill with his entourage, amongst the small number of people who decamped to the hotel after the show.

We loved A Museum In Baghdad – what else is there to say?

Postscript following press night: reviews of this production can be found through this link.