A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen

Bruce Gordon Theatre, IPAC, Wollongong, Friday 22 August 2025

I approached this show on two levels: as a piece of theatre like any other, and then in light of what I bring to it.

As a piece of theatre, A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen is thoroughly charming. In an 80 minute monologue, Josh Hinton tells us the story of his 20-something life and how he came to understand his family history, his cultural heritage, and his place in the world.

That family history is gripping, with the kind of stories of migration, survival, marriage, births, parenting, faith, deaths, sacrifices, and joy that lie hidden in many people’s lives. Josh tells it extremely well, evocatively sharing the sense of wonderment he felt on his personal journey of discovery.

What makes this special is how it’s staged. As compelling and charming a performer as Josh, the show – and the story – is wonderfully enhanced by the use of clever audiovisuals to bring it to life: a map of the world projected onto a table which then becomes the stage backdrop, family photos projected onto various surfaces, Josh’s brother Dom at a side table managing the light and sound tech (and offering occasional brotherly interjections), and above all, the brilliant device of having Josh cook his grandmother’s one-pot chicken curry live on stage as he tells us his family story. Aroma is not often used as a stage device, but this is a very powerful one.

Josh uses all the space on the stage, too, coming downstage from behind his cooking table to address the audience closely, going from one side of the stage to the other, getting items from an onstage pantry. As a moving finale, Dom joins Josh downstage to accompany him on guitar as the brothers harmonise in a moving tribute to their grandfather.

It all completely works as a piece of theatre, which is no suprise to me.

And that’s where what I bring to it comes in.

Josh and Dom are the sons of Simon Hinton, the Artistic Director of Merrigong Theatre Company, a resident of Corrimal like me, and someone I regard as a friend. I was very moved that Simon came to Hazel’s farewell in March. A child actor himself (you can see him in Caddie, aged 5), for the past 20 years the driving force behind Merrigong (the best entrepeneurial theatre company in Australia by a country mile), and as astute a theatre professional as we have in this country, it’s only natural that the program for Josh’s show credits Simon with “Dramaturgy and additional writing”.

Many Illawarra people will know that Simon’s father Phillip was also an actor of great repute, a lifelong professional on stage and in film and TV. I was fortunate to see Phillip in several local productions before he passed away in 2021. It was wonderful to see him celebrated in this show.

And then there’s a connection with Joshua and Dominic themselves, who crossed paths with my daughter Mae in several contexts in the early years after we moved to Corrimal. It’s pretty amazing to see a couple of blokes you knew as kids up on stage.

Finally, my own family history is as rich and dramatic a tale as the one Josh relates in this show. Maybe everyone’s family history is, if you look deep enough, especially those of immigrants. In Josh and Dom’s case, it’s a background of Persian, Sri Lankan, English, and South African that delivers their rich cultural heritage. For my children, it’s Frisian, Dutch, English, and Irish. And all of them are, inevitably and inextricably, Australian.

As Josh says in one of his closing lines, “I think when people ask, I’ll just say I’m from Wollongong”.

A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen opened in 2024 as a development show for MerrigongX, and has since toured, so I don’t know if it will go beyond this season.

If it does, go see it.