The second and final production in the Arcola's "Orient Express" mini-season, which acknowledges the Turkish origins of much of the surrounding district's population (and of the venue's management team), takes the title literally. The Pera Palas hotel in Istanbul was the preferred destination of many travellers on the Orient Express railway.

Sinan H. Ünel's play looks at residents of the same hotel room in three successive generations: a Turkophile English woman visiting at the end of the first world war (and the birth of modern secular Turkey), an American teacher in the 1950s and a gay couple a few years before the play's composition in 2000. Particular characters link the eras: a maid in the harem visited by Evelyn Crawley in 1918 becomes the mother of the man who marries teacher Kathy in 1953, and this couple in turn become the parents of Murat, who returns home with his American lover in 1994.