Audiences offered a taste of Persia

TWO local venues will be hosting performances of a show with a difference this weekend, when the Farnham Maltings production company brings its latest show, The Iranian Feast, to New Deer and Portsoy.

Billed as "a play with food from the heart of Persia", the show will be staged in New Deer at 7.30pm on Thursday, and Portsoy Church Hall on Saturday, November 16 at 5pm.

The Iranian Feast is part thriller, part cookery lesson, telling the story of a family working out how life will be in the future over traditional Persian food prepared by central character Abbas and his wife and daughter, with help from their friends and neighbours.

Critics have described the show as "surprising, uplifting and a celebration of being alive with fresh herbs, spices, sweet vegetables, and Eli's mother's secret ingredient going into the pot".

Gavin Stride, the show's artistic director, said: "This play has been a long time coming. We wanted to make a piece that is about us and the world, about the things we share in common as much as the things that separate us.

"Now, with all of the talk about an increasingly unstable world, it feels like the right time to be making a piece of contemporary theatre for the most convivial of spaces – village halls.

"Our hope is that people will feel that they have spent an evening in the company of new friends."

Staged at both venues by North East Arts Touring (NEATS), the show comes highly recommended by New Deer volunteer promoter Sue Robertson and Soy Arts and Theatre promoter Helen Munro.

Sue said: "Farnham Maltings is once again set to delight audiences as they embark on their autumn tour to villages nationwide with The Iranian Feast, a celebration of the similarities of family life, no matter where we live, and our shared humanness.

"We sit in their living room with them and experience a family in crisis desperately trying to cling onto what is dear to them.

"The audience is invited to a family celebration, and shares a small taste of a Persian supper together, sitting at tables."

Meanwhile, front-of-house staff at the Portsoy performance will be getting into Persian costume, and ticket-holders will be treated to couscous and pomegranate-flavoured ice cream, produced by the Portsoy Ice Cream Shop.

Tickets for the New Deer performance, priced £10 (£8 for confessions) are available from The Pharmacy (01771 644217) and Food for Thought (01771 644366).

Tickets, priced £9 and £7, for the performance at Portsoy Church Hall, are available from Portsoy Ice Cream Shop and Helen Munro on 01261 842307.

For more information, visit www.neatshows.org.uk