|
|
 |
| |
James name-drops his way through tea time
A prolific north London theatre director has compiled a fine insight into the rich and famous through a colourful cookbook. By Ruth Gorb
Cook-a-Story by James Roose-Evans Bleddfa Books, £7.99 order this book
JAMES Roose-Evans has always been a man with great ideas.He founded the Hampstead Theatre, for one thing.
Great ideals, too; alongside directing numerous plays all over the world as well as the West End (84 Charing Cross Road was his creation), he managed to become an ordained priest and to start the Bleddfa Centre in Wales, a meeting place of the arts and the spirit.
If all this sounds too good to be true, think Jimmie Roose-Evans host, cook, gardener, raconteur with a fruity and sometimes scandalous line in stories. His dinner parties in Belsize Park can be rumbustious, one’s fellow-guests from the world of books and theatre. He knows them all, and he has prevailed upon them all to contribute to his latest enterprise – Cook-a- Story.
We have had celeb cookbooks before, but this one is different. Mr Roose-Evans has asked for anecdotes as well as recipes. He wanted to hear about culinary and social disasters as well as triumphs, and he has them in spades.
Lord Beaumont seems to have been particularly afflicted: on one occasion, when the Archbishop of Canterbury was the guest of honour, the cook was so overwhelmed that she locked herself away with a bottle of gin. A lunch party in St Tropez proved even more alarming: drinks on the terrace were interrupted by a screaming cook being pursued by the caretaker wielding a cleaver. One of the guests, Clement Freud, always one to care for the inner man, interposed and managed to put off the mayhem until after lunch.
A very good piperade featured on the menu, writes Lord Beaumont with admirable cool.
It isn’t all about high living. John Cleese offers a dish of cornflakes (“add basil if required”), and author Deborah Moggach writes of her Hungarian lover who moved a great many of his friends and relations into her Hampstead house, all of them requiring large and frequent meals. Vegetarianism and various idiosyncrasies meant that she relied largely on what she calls a “potato and cabbage thing”. It is, she promises, surprisingly delicious.
Richard Briers has a bad moment in a Japanese restaurant (a claw shot out of a deep-fried thingy), Joanna Trollope discovers that swans are mad for her chocolate cake, and Rabbi Lionel Blue has, of course, a Jewish joke for us.
There are lots of good stories – one of the best involves Iris Murdoch and an Eccles cake – and there are some tempting recipes, although Roald Dahl’s oxtail stew is probably best avoided.
It’s all great fun and star-studded (the book even has a preface by Gordon Ramsay and illustrations by Quentin Blake), what James Roose-Evans calls “embarrassingly name-dropping”. But, he adds, that’s what it’s all about these days; we live in a celebrity-obsessed climate. And if the big names are going to sell the book, all well and good, and in a good cause.
All the money it makes will go to the Bleddfa Trust. And for Londoners who have no idea what that means, Roose-Evans’ introduction tells the story of his rescue of an old church in mid-Wales and his development there of a very special arts centre – a place for creativity and meditation, for music and friendship, exhibitions and lectures, and for retreats.
The cookbook is a lighthearted celebration of 30 years of the centre.
Mr Roose-Evans, now in his 70s, divides his time between Wales and London, and his energy is prodigious. Not content with running the centre in Wales, his thoughts are turning now to directing Hugh Whitemore’s play, Best of Friends, at the Hampstead Theatre.
He first directed it 17 years ago with John Gielgud, Rosemary Harris and Ray McAnally in the cast; this time round he has Roy Dotrice, Michael Pennington and Patricia Routledge, and he will be taking the show to the West End after the Hampstead run.
He is, he says, very moved by the prospect of coming back to Hampstead. He last directed there 32 years ago, an experimental production of Oedipus with the ballerina Svetlana Beriosova as Jocasta.
What does he think of the new theatre? “Wonderful to have all that foyer space,” he says. “I’ve always thought that going to the theatre should be a social experience. And the stage there offers a great many opportunities.”
Opportunities he will no doubt enjoy to the full with Best of Friends which was a runaway West End success 17 years ago despite what may not be seen as a popular subject. It is based on the correspondence between Sir Sydney Cockerell, who put the Fitzwilliam Museum on the map, a scholarly nun, Dame Laurentia, and George Bernard Shaw.
“Hugh created a play from the letters between them, an atheist, an agnostic, and a believer,” Roose Evans says. “This production will be a re-appraisal. It is exactly the sort of play I want to do.” The play will run for four weeks at Hampstead, opening in March 2006, and there is already a flurry of interest at the box office. As for Cook-a-Story, the book is full of good things, including Alan Ayckbourn’s fatfree Christmas pudding, and Princess Margaret’s favourite dish at a supper party. Her Royal Highness asked for more. As namedropping goes, that one is hard to beat.
|
|
|
|
|
|
