Dine-in and take-away at Brisbane Festival
Joshua Hinton fills the theatre with music, memories and exotic smells as he attempts to make his grandmother’s chicken curry, live on stage at this year’s Brisbane Festival.
Dinner and a show? What could be more enticing? This year’s Brisbane Festival takes that concept to a new dimension with A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry) – intertwining cooking with memories and song – all onstage.
From September 16 to 20, the Cremorne Theatre at QPAC will be transformed into a room of reverie and aromas as Joshua Hinton and his brother Dominic prepare their grandmother’s revered chicken curry while telling stories of intrepid journeys made by generations of their family.
Hinton says he has long hoped to bring his show to Brisbane to complete his family folklore connection to the iconic Paddington restaurant that is Sultan’s Kitchen – founded by his grandparents.
“It started as me asking my grandmother – who I call Mehmeh – to tell me about her life,” Hinton says. “I had grown up listening to these incredible stories of her fragmented childhood growing up in Iran and India, and they had always sounded so incredible that at one point I sat down with her and I said, let’s just start from the beginning and let’s record all of these stories.”
As Hinton recorded Mehmeh’s memories, he realised the interconnectedness of how her journey also linked with his search for identity.
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“That’s where the curry came into it, because the curry – chicken curry – has always been such an important part in my connection to culture growing up,” he says.
This evolved into the show as he realised how food was a crucial ingredient to intimate family relationships.
“When I was making the show, talking to Mehmeh, talking to my uncles who run the restaurant now, it was always like, `wouldn’t it be an amazing full circle moment if we were then able to do it in Brisbane?’
“The opportunity to do it so close to the restaurant in Paddington is really lovely – they’ve been around since 1983. I do hope that it does bring a different element to the show, people knowing the restaurant and knowing a bit of the story behind that. To bring it to Brisbane, to have all of that side of the family hopefully be there and watch the show and listen to these stories, it’s just a lovely, lovely thing.”
This is the theatre-maker and singer-songwriter’s first play, which enjoyed successful, confidence-building runs earlier this year. He’s thankful for “throwing myself in the deep end” with the support of Merrigong Theatre from his home town of Wollongong, south of Sydney, which helped him bring the show to life.
‘It’s a bit of a dance really … there are moments where I’m telling the story from behind the stove top’
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“I was born in Sydney, was in Brisbane for five or six of years and then have been in Wollongong ever since,” he says.
Hinton cooks Mehmeh’s famous curry live on stage, with each audience member lucky enough to share in the creation – all while transporting us from the backstreets of Sri Lanka to a bustling city in India to a schoolyard in Iran and a South African farm.
“It’s a bit of a dance really. As I cook the curry and tell the story there are moments where I’m telling the story from behind the stove top because I’m having to add spices or I’m chopping the ingredients,” he says.
“It really does jump all over the place. The South Africa part and the English part are my paternal grandfather … so I have these three storylines happening at once. I talk about Mehmeh, her travels, my grandfather who I call Poppy and his travels, and then my own memories, then my discovery through all of these different stories.
“The rehearsal process was lovely because in the cooking of the curry, while telling the stories, we discovered little moments where something that I was doing in the cooking really gave a nice new bit of flavour to the text that I was speaking.
“It’s me, then my brother is also on stage. He’s live-opping the sound and video that I have. We have three projectors that show family pictures. We have a live camera feed on top, (directed) down on me cooking the curry. So he’s controlling all of that, and he has a few little lines. He even heckles me a few times in the show.”
Of course, Hinton is looking forward to visiting Sultan’s Kitchen while he’s in town to relive some of his childhood memories.
“Yes, yes, absolutely. When I visit my family, I’m there too often. I think they start to get sick of me, but it’s lovely. We get to eat all of the Indian food we can hold, which is great.”
A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen, Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, September 16-20.
brisbanefestival.com.au/events/a-place-in-the-sultans-kitchen