|
|
 |
| |
| 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
|
James Roose-Evans at home in Belsize Park
John Cleese: Cornflakes with basil
Princess Margaret: favourite dish
|
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 fat-free Christmas pudding,
and Princess Margaret’s favourite dish at a supper party. Her
Royal Highness asked for more. As name-dropping goes, that one is
hard to beat.
• The Bleddfa Trust is on 01547 550 377. |
|
Hopes of bypassing supermarket titans
WHAT have supermarkets done for us? They have enabled more of us to
enjoy...
FULL STORY
Cheap tickets give us taste of the past
SOMETHING didn’t feel quite right as I hurried along a busy Seven
Sisters Road on the way to the England...
FULL STORY
|
