Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: Quite often people say to me, I couldn't possibly have
Speaker 2: you to dinner. You're the chef of the River Cafe
Speaker 2: and cooking for you would be overwhelming. That's how I
Speaker 2: feel about introducing Sir David Hare. How do you write
Speaker 2: for one of the great playwrights of our generation? Skylight plenty,
Speaker 2: stuff Happens, Beat the Devil, screenplays for movies, The Hours, Damage,
Speaker 2: The White Crow, to name a few. But I do
Speaker 2: think David and I do have much in common. We
Speaker 2: both like being hosts, me in the River Cafe and
Speaker 2: David in his home, where he understands the theater of
Speaker 2: sitting at a table. We both know that if food
Speaker 2: brings a table to life, so do the people around it.
Speaker 2: And for David, apparently the ingredients for good night are
Speaker 2: always carefully considered. We also share a love for what
Speaker 2: we do, and I think we're both defined by our
Speaker 2: commitment investment in social and political issues of the day.
Speaker 2: In the past few days, I've been spoken to many
Speaker 2: of the actors and directors who say that working for
Speaker 2: him was an honor and a huge part of their career.
Speaker 2: David's commitment to the written word on stage and screen
Speaker 2: is only rivaled by his love for sculptor Nicole Fari,
Speaker 2: his beautiful, brilliant wife of over thirty years. A commitment
Speaker 2: to our partner's mind, to Richard Rodgers is yet another
Speaker 2: thing we share today. We are here together in the
Speaker 2: River Cafe to talk about food, memories, theater, travel and more.
Speaker 2: It'd be natural to feel overwhelmed, but David makes it easy,
Speaker 2: and I just feel delighted and lucky to have him here.
Speaker 1: How kind of you, Thank you.
Speaker 2: I have just come from the River Cafe kitchen and
Speaker 2: you said that you wanted to do the recipe for
Speaker 2: squid rocket and chili. And was that had that had
Speaker 2: something to do with your memory of Rose? If we're
Speaker 2: talking about memories.
Speaker 1: I knew Rose that winter, which you can see.
Speaker 2: So Rose Gray, the co founder with me of the
Speaker 2: River Cafe.
Speaker 1: Will know more about this than I did. I knew
Speaker 1: Rose Gray. And Rose went out to Tuscany one winter,
Speaker 1: not to start a restaurant at all, but to start
Speaker 1: a cook to write a cookbook. And she went for
Speaker 1: six months to stay in the house of Henry Moore's
Speaker 1: daughter Mary Moore, and so I knew her then, and
Speaker 1: she came back with I can see the book in
Speaker 1: my head with all this, all these sort of notebook
Speaker 1: full of recipes, and somehow, which I've never understood, how
Speaker 1: you managed to push her off course and to get
Speaker 1: her to open a restaurant and not to write a cookbook.
Speaker 2: You don't want to write a cookbook? Grow do you
Speaker 2: want to come and open a little cafe in Harrismith?
Speaker 1: Did you say that to her?
Speaker 2: She'd always been a passionate cook when I first met her,
Speaker 2: before she went tiddly, and then I think she took
Speaker 2: that time to really get into the kind of cooking
Speaker 2: of Tuscany, to learn the recipes. And she was a
Speaker 2: beautiful draftsman. She draw everything. We would sit at a
Speaker 2: table talking about it to mate them and she'd say
Speaker 2: this is the one I want and draw it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so I think she can buy the illustrations with
Speaker 2: the recipes. And she came back and she went to
Speaker 2: work with Anthony Carlucco. And so then when Richard had
Speaker 2: this space here, you know, we were looking for people
Speaker 2: to do it, and I called up Ros and said,
Speaker 2: do you want to do this with me? Should we do
Speaker 2: it together? And within the day we decided to Are
Speaker 2: you saying eighty seven, Well yeah, talking to her in
Speaker 2: eighty six probably, and then opening in eighty seven, but
Speaker 2: it was teeny tiny and then the rest is history.
Speaker 1: I chose this recipe because it's the first thing I
Speaker 1: ever had here and I can remember. And I came
Speaker 1: with Julie Christie, and Julie said to me, have the squid.
Speaker 1: It's the best thing, because she'd been before and she
Speaker 1: told me to have the squid. And I had the squid,
Speaker 1: and I've never forgotten the taste, and I've just tasted
Speaker 1: it in your kitchen.
Speaker 2: It's exactly thirty seven years later.
Speaker 1: It tastes exactly the same, which is an amazing achievement.
Speaker 2: So would you like to read the recipe that you chose.
Speaker 1: Six medium squid, twelve red chilies, seated, chopped, two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five grams of rocket, and three lemons. Clean
Speaker 1: the squid, and, using a serrated knife, score the inner
Speaker 1: side of the flattened squid body with parallel lines one
Speaker 1: centimeter apart. Do the same the other way to make
Speaker 1: cross hatching for the chili sauce. Put the chopped chili
Speaker 1: in a bowl and cover with the oil. Place the
Speaker 1: squid scored side down on a hot grill, season and
Speaker 1: grill for one or two minutes. Yeah, but your grill's
Speaker 1: much nicer than most home grills.
Speaker 2: And even on any grill won't take very long time.
Speaker 1: Turn the squid over, they will immediately curl up, by
Speaker 1: which time they will be cooked. You toss the rocket
Speaker 1: in olive oil and lemon. You plate with some of
Speaker 1: the rocket. You spoon the chili sauce on the squid,
Speaker 1: and you serve with lemon. And there is actually no
Speaker 1: better lunch than that. It's sort of the best thing
Speaker 1: to eat between noon and one o'clock on a weekday.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe is excited. We're opening the River Cafe Cafe.
Speaker 2: Come for a morning Briochian cappuccino, a plate of seasonal
Speaker 2: antipasity on the terrace, or an ice cream or a
Speaker 2: peratibo in the sun. We can't wait to open and
Speaker 2: we cannot wait to welcome you. I want to talk
Speaker 2: about your childhood and growing up and going to the
Speaker 2: school where food was poisonous, but maybe we should just
Speaker 2: start at the beginning of your time in London. For
Speaker 2: now and then go back to that. Tell me about restaurants.
Speaker 1: Well, I very much agree with Michael Winner. I can't
Speaker 1: say that about many things, but I very much agree
Speaker 1: with Michael Winner when you said everyone thinks there's been
Speaker 1: a food revolution, but actually the food was better in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties, And of course that's not
Speaker 1: universally true, meaning buying large food was terrible. Of course
Speaker 1: it was in Britain, it was absolutely awful. But maybe
Speaker 1: because each restaurant was the first place that you tasted
Speaker 1: wonderful things, they seemed more wonderful because of that. In
Speaker 1: other words, when I first met Michael Winner, I was
Speaker 1: running the Cambridge Film Society and I was inviting him
Speaker 1: to show his film I'll Never Forget was his name,
Speaker 1: and he took me to Cuovardist. Well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've been a boy who'd been brought up in bex
Speaker 1: Hill in the nineteen fifties, then Clovardist was just beyond
Speaker 1: anything you could imagine. It was so delicious. And I
Speaker 1: wrote down a few of the other places that we
Speaker 1: used to go. Jimmy's, of course, Jimmy's a Greek. Jimmy's
Speaker 1: the famous Greek Streep when you went downstairs, where you
Speaker 1: went downstairs and you had beef steering chips for three
Speaker 1: and six months and it was so delicious. The Amalfi,
Speaker 1: which was the only place where you could get a pizza.
Speaker 1: This is before Pizza Express.
Speaker 2: Were we talking fifties, which I was sixties.
Speaker 1: Sixties, that's early sixties. Young Friends. You had to drive
Speaker 1: down towards Stratford East and there was a Chinese restaurant
Speaker 1: down there called Young Friends that was so delicious. I
Speaker 1: can still taste it. And we thought nothing of driving
Speaker 1: for an hour down to the East Dend to go
Speaker 1: to Young Friends because it was the only place you
Speaker 1: could get really top right Chinese food. I'm hoping everyone's
Speaker 1: salivating at the memory of this. The Ganges, of course,
Speaker 1: the Indian restaurant in what is now Chinatown a Gerrard
Speaker 1: Street and the Ganges was run by Calcutta Communists, and
Speaker 1: the guy who ran it worked on a share of
Speaker 1: the take for everybody who worked in the restaurant, so
Speaker 1: that everybody was paid equally, regardless of whether they were
Speaker 1: a cook or a waiter or the owner or whatever
Speaker 1: your job was. Because they were Communists and they cooked
Speaker 1: the best prawn partier I have ever tasted in my life.
Speaker 1: I will never taste a porn partier as good as
Speaker 1: that again. Or maybe it's just it's because it's the first.
Speaker 2: But do you know, I think there are writers, actors, musicians,
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney for one, footballers Dave Beckham, they really measure
Speaker 2: their success in terms of where they were able to eat,
Speaker 2: you know, so they remember the first time Beckham will
Speaker 2: say that he went to a restaurant where he didn't
Speaker 2: have to look at the prices first, or when Paul
Speaker 2: McCartney toldly had a good bottle of wine, and that
Speaker 2: it became kind of seeing their career through the trajectory
Speaker 2: of where they were able to eat.
Speaker 1: It's so true, isn't it. But what I loved was
Speaker 1: all these places. You know, I'm going to remember Schmids.
Speaker 1: You're too young to know. Schmidts was Eastern European food
Speaker 1: in Charlotte Street where you could have Again, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of berth Berg in Yon, sort of those
Speaker 1: kind of stewy Eastern European food, very very very cheap
Speaker 1: and absolutely delicious, and that there's less of. That's what
Speaker 1: I think that there was that whole idea that the
Speaker 1: best food might be really cheap.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the best food was cheap, and sometimes it was
Speaker 2: just such a great experience to go to a restaurant
Speaker 2: where everybody was having fun. You know that you didn't
Speaker 2: feel intimidated, you didn't feel that if you didn't know
Speaker 2: the wine list, everybody'd be looking down on you, but
Speaker 2: that restaurants were fun. Did you go to restaurants as
Speaker 2: a child. Did your parents ever take you to restaurants?
Speaker 1: My dad was a sailor, and so basically it was
Speaker 1: austerity at home, and then one month of the year
Speaker 1: he'd come in with a big roll of notes that
Speaker 1: he you know, he would come with an elastic band
Speaker 1: full of five pound notes. We lived in in austere,
Speaker 1: cheerless Britain, and he'd roll in with, you know, all
Speaker 1: this money, and he'd take us out to a steakhouse
Speaker 1: in Hastings on the front, which of course was run
Speaker 1: by Cypriots, as steakhouses then were, and we would have
Speaker 1: what would seem to us and unimaginably luxurious. And also
Speaker 1: because he was the purser on the ship, all this
Speaker 1: stuff would come to the house like a whole lamb.
Speaker 1: I mean you know, off the side from piano, and
Speaker 1: so ridiculous quantities of things you couldn't deal with would
Speaker 1: suddenly arrive in the house when there was no food
Speaker 1: when he was away because he didn't leave much behind him.
Speaker 2: And your mother cooked for you every day. My mother
Speaker 2: cooked and she was so did she have to have
Speaker 2: a directness?
Speaker 1: And she was believe you were there?
Speaker 2: How many of me?
Speaker 1: And my sister too. And when I divorced from my
Speaker 1: first wife, she said, but who's going to look after you?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm going to look after myself.
Speaker 1: And she said, but the earning, the cleaning, the cooking,
Speaker 1: Who's going to do that? And I said, well, I
Speaker 1: probably have to do that myself, won't I And my
Speaker 1: mother just couldn't understand. She just couldn't understand how a
Speaker 1: man could live alone, because it's sort of if that
Speaker 1: was possible. What was her life about, because her life
Speaker 1: had been about caring about us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what did she cook for you?
Speaker 1: Stovey potatoes? Do you know that? Okay? Well, stovee But
Speaker 1: I've looked it up since I said I was going
Speaker 1: to mention it. And apparently you can put anything you like.
Speaker 1: For instance, you bowl the potatoes and then you pour
Speaker 1: over the fat from Sunday's joint over it to make
Speaker 1: them taste, or you put the shreds of the remains in.
Speaker 1: But it's basically meat, vegetables and potatoes bald together. And
Speaker 1: that was was good, absolutely delicious, very very good. How
Speaker 1: can it's a peasant dick and Scottish food was very
Speaker 1: basic like that. And the beloved things were stovey potatoes
Speaker 1: hagish obviously, which is you know, a quiet taste, but
Speaker 1: I love it, and mints, which I gather now is
Speaker 1: on posh menus.
Speaker 2: Just as your mother came from Scotland to tastings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she met my father during the war in Grinnock.
Speaker 1: He was in the Royal Navy during the war and
Speaker 1: so she was working in the Wrens and they met
Speaker 1: in Grinnock, down the Estuary from Paisley. Paisley is a
Speaker 1: suburb of Glasgow from which the famous Scottish playwright John
Speaker 1: Byrne came from there, and John writes brilliantly about Paisley
Speaker 1: and Paisley is one of the roughest towns in Scotland.
Speaker 1: It is a really, really tough place and it made
Speaker 1: my mother a very very timid woman. She spent her
Speaker 1: whole life terrified and particularly terrified of men, because she
Speaker 1: getting home at Saturday night over the rolling drunks in
Speaker 1: Paisley had made her very very frightened.
Speaker 2: And so growing up, then you went to boarding school.
Speaker 1: I went to a school called Lancing.
Speaker 2: Oh Lancing, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1: And my contemporaries were three of us, all entered show business.
Speaker 1: Tim Rice, who was a little bit older than me,
Speaker 1: and Christopher Hampton and me. So there's this extraordinary coincidence
Speaker 1: that all three of us were at school together. I
Speaker 1: have a friend who's a headmaster who says he's worked
Speaker 1: in many, many schools, but he has never seen food
Speaker 1: served to anybody as disgusting as the food that we
Speaker 1: were served at Lancing in the nineteen sixties. I just
Speaker 1: remember carried eggs with a skin over them. I remember
Speaker 1: fish in white sauce with a skin over it. I
Speaker 1: remember everything with a skin over it. And I particularly
Speaker 1: remember that they put tea leaves in a sock and
Speaker 1: lowered the sock into an urn and poured boiling water
Speaker 1: into the urn and used a sock as a form
Speaker 1: of tea bag, and it it was primeval.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and no wonder why, because it must have been
Speaker 2: a school that encouraged Did it encourage you, three of
Speaker 2: you to be involved in drama the arts at all?
Speaker 1: We were lucky enough to be at an old fashioned
Speaker 1: public school which was going through a period of humanist revival,
Speaker 1: and we were encouraged. You know, we had an art
Speaker 1: film society in which we were looking at Bergmann films
Speaker 1: and Fellini films and Antonioni films, and these were being
Speaker 1: shown to us at the age of sixty. We had
Speaker 1: a couple, I had a couple of brilliant, enlightened teachers
Speaker 1: who did the classic thing of infusing you with love
Speaker 1: of French and German literature and English literature and the
Speaker 1: arts and drama and film. And we were just very
Speaker 1: very lucky. But not food, so not food at all.
Speaker 2: Food.
Speaker 1: So for food you had to go into and you
Speaker 1: go into Brighton. I couldn't afford to go to English Is,
Speaker 1: which was the fish restaurant. Do you know that one?
Speaker 1: You know nothing?
Speaker 2: I know nothing, You know nothing.
Speaker 1: Teach me you know nothing.
Speaker 2: That's soul to be you educated of.
Speaker 1: You have no idea how difficult it was to eat well,
Speaker 1: and then how satisfying. It was to manage to eat well,
Speaker 1: because the basic diet of the British was disgusting.
Speaker 2: I always say they came out of a war, you know,
Speaker 2: they came out of rational and cut them some slack.
Speaker 1: I've just read a novel by Margonite Alaski, which who
Speaker 1: was a sort of forties intellectual, called The Lost Child,
Speaker 1: and it's about a man who goes from England to
Speaker 1: try and find his child. In France in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: five and France in ninety forty five, everyone's eating absolutely
Speaker 1: wonderfully and the first thing he says is, oh my god.
Speaker 1: France was an occupied country under the Nazi rule, which
Speaker 1: you know, suffered terribly during the Second World War, and
Speaker 1: yet there's all this gorgeous food, whereas in London by
Speaker 1: the end of the war there was absolutely nothing left
Speaker 1: at all, the people reaching cabbages and turnips and busps.
Speaker 2: Would you eat when when you're writing I.
Speaker 1: Can't eat before the theater, You.
Speaker 2: Can't before I play. Nobody I haven't met. I've only
Speaker 2: met one person who could eat before, during, and after,
Speaker 2: and that was Emily Blunt. Otherwise everybody says.
Speaker 1: They can you I mean when she's actually performed, she has.
Speaker 2: A hamburger like before she goes on and then she
Speaker 2: has a hamburger sometimes in the middle of the between eggs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she's an eider.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely extraordinary, isn't it. The advantage of running
Speaker 1: a traveling theater, which we did from nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy one, was you go to a regional city,
Speaker 1: you do the show that by nine point thirty there
Speaker 1: was nowhere to eat, absolutely nowhere. So we always ended
Speaker 1: up in the gay club because every single city I
Speaker 1: can remember the gay club in York, I can remember
Speaker 1: the gay club in Gloucester. You know, every city you
Speaker 1: went to there would be a gay club.
Speaker 2: Was it quite closeted?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty closeted. It was usually downstairs. You'd
Speaker 1: usually go downstairs and then they'd usually be red velvet
Speaker 1: and sort of you know, a bit of decor and
Speaker 1: then down it of course would be the liveliest and
Speaker 1: most fun and most interesting place in the town. And
Speaker 1: it was the place where people who didn't go to
Speaker 1: bed at ten o'clock wiled away the hours till one
Speaker 1: or two.
Speaker 2: What was the food like at a gay club?
Speaker 1: They were okay, it was okay. Yeah, there's usually be
Speaker 1: something you could eat that was decent, decent to eat.
Speaker 1: And it was the same in London. There were actors
Speaker 1: clubs in London that were are gay ish, they were
Speaker 1: predominantly gay or a couple in London where you were,
Speaker 1: and they were very They were basically places where actors
Speaker 1: went to after the show and they were very, very nice,
Speaker 1: and it made you feel you were part of a
Speaker 1: community and that you were part of a way of
Speaker 1: life and that you were you were all in it together.
Speaker 2: I can understand why an actor might not eat for
Speaker 2: the performances. As the writer, why wouldn't you eat, you
Speaker 2: just to with nerves and then after you were able
Speaker 2: to go out, because that's the thing is that you
Speaker 2: go out, you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And probably the career of Jeremy King is entirely based,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I mean a parice and all those restaurants
Speaker 1: Schiky's in that they're entirely based on their reputation for
Speaker 1: being places where actors go. Because Jeremy always had that
Speaker 1: very simple philosophy that people go as much to stare
Speaker 1: at the other diners as they do to eat the food.
Speaker 1: Erby King again, who I probably knew right at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of when he first started. You know, he
Speaker 1: just worked out that if you could see actors, and
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, at the National Theater, we always
Speaker 1: had the problem that nobody would go to that restaurant.
Speaker 1: The restaurant was always a disaster, and I remember Jeremy
Speaker 1: was asked, what do you do about it? He said,
Speaker 1: let the actors eat their half price, and if the
Speaker 1: audience believes they will see the actors after the show,
Speaker 1: then they will go to that restaurant. If you know,
Speaker 1: if you go to the show and afterwards you see
Speaker 1: I don't know, Tony Hopkins or Judy Dench, then of
Speaker 1: course it seems like a good restaurant. But if you
Speaker 1: go and it's just you and the wind whistling ground,
Speaker 1: it's not very cheerful.
Speaker 2: There's actually they say, there's a good restaurant there, now
Speaker 2: have you as it's very touchingly named the lastin which
Speaker 2: is named after Dennis Lasten.
Speaker 1: I have to be very careful about this because actually
Speaker 1: that restaurant, believe it or not, is when I first
Speaker 1: saw my wife, see.
Speaker 2: Her across the crowded room, I did, did.
Speaker 1: You I'd written a play called murmuring joges yes, and
Speaker 1: the technical rehearsal. The leading lady's clothes were very poor,
Speaker 1: and I said to Bob Crowley, who was the designer,
Speaker 1: I don't think very much of what she's wearing. And
Speaker 1: Bob said, don't worry, I'm seeing Nickel Farrey tomorrow. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know what that meant. I remember, I'm seeing
Speaker 1: Nicole far what that means? Then, of course the leading lady,
Speaker 1: Alfonsia Emmanuel, turned up the next day in the most
Speaker 1: dazzling clothes and I said, oh my goodness me, this
Speaker 1: Nickel Farrey must be something. And Bob said, well, you'll
Speaker 1: meet her because we'll give her tickets for the first night.
Speaker 1: And so this is, i'm afraid, a humble brag that
Speaker 1: she wasn't going to come. But fortunately I went on
Speaker 1: late night Lineup the night.
Speaker 2: Late night Lineup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she saw me on television night before and
Speaker 1: she went, oh maybe I will.
Speaker 2: Go, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1: So she went, and there she was on the first night.
Speaker 2: And do you go to restaurants of that now?
Speaker 1: Hermets? You are well, because Nicole was a fashion designer,
Speaker 1: and so when she was a fashion designer, she was
Speaker 1: out and about a lot. Now she's a sculptor. She
Speaker 1: just wants to stay at home all the time, and
Speaker 1: I'm very very happy watching television.
Speaker 2: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
Speaker 2: please make sure to rape and review the podcast on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Thank you. There are movies about meals that
Speaker 2: people have, and there's wonderful plays about the kitchen and
Speaker 2: the whole the plays that took place in restaurants.
Speaker 1: But in Skylight it's central.
Speaker 2: It's central. Carrie describes making spaghetti bolonnaise, and then there's
Speaker 2: the scene of the parmesan.
Speaker 1: I'd just like to say that Carrie Mulligan's spaghetti bolinais,
Speaker 1: which she had to make on stage every night, was
Speaker 1: very very good.
Speaker 2: Because she said that Stephen director, right, Stephen Stephen directed it,
Speaker 2: and that he and you brought a chef from North
Speaker 2: London who made a fantastic spaghetti boloneis with sausage.
Speaker 1: She came from Bologna and she said that the bolognaise
Speaker 1: what like sausage in it? Do you think that's true?
Speaker 2: I would not be surprised, but.
Speaker 1: It was always an interesting test of the actress's performance.
Speaker 1: Whether anybody ate their spaghetti bolonnaise in the interval, said,
Speaker 1: some people who've played that part, you know you, frankly
Speaker 1: in the in the interval would not necessarily want to
Speaker 1: eat what they've cooked. But Carrie's was really good, and
Speaker 1: people would out around in order to he cares.
Speaker 2: She described it. She also said the garlic was sometimes
Speaker 2: she had to be careful about eating too much garlic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's not very friendly to your fellow.
Speaker 2: Act Let's just talk about the parmesan scene.
Speaker 1: The parmazan cheese is just that it's a joke about
Speaker 1: the fact that he's a businessman and he's a restauranteur.
Speaker 1: He's got restaurants in the King's Road. He was not,
Speaker 1: I hastened to add. And everybody said to me, is
Speaker 1: this meant to be Terrence Conran? And I kept saying,
Speaker 1: it is not meant to be Terrence Conran. I barely
Speaker 1: know Terrence Conrine, but everyone said it at the time.
Speaker 1: And because he was sort of famous for having restaurants
Speaker 1: in the King's Road, I suppose, but he's munificent, so
Speaker 1: he can't bear her little piece of parmesan he can't
Speaker 1: bear sweaty piece of cheese wrapped in cellophane that she's
Speaker 1: trying to put on top of her spaghetti. And so
Speaker 1: he goes on and on about his supplies and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they have an argument about it, and they also
Speaker 1: have an argument about how to make spaghetti. Welln't it,
Speaker 1: which is a contentious subject.
Speaker 2: Is that something in your life that you would care
Speaker 2: enough to have an argument someone about? Now?
Speaker 1: No, And I also love Nicole's cooking, so I don't
Speaker 1: interfere in Nicole's cooking. She doesn't interfere in mine. So
Speaker 1: I have to say, be hopeless is entertaining.
Speaker 2: And well, that's not what your guests say.
Speaker 1: It's only because Nicole. She was giving dinner parties long
Speaker 1: before I arrived. If I had not met her, I
Speaker 1: would not be giving dinner parties. I'm extremely shy, and
Speaker 1: the only way I get over my shyness is by
Speaker 1: riding on her coattails.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I'll let you're tough it out with Fiona Golfer,
Speaker 2: who said that it was her quote about being a
Speaker 2: theatrical experience coming to your house for dinner.
Speaker 1: No, it's true that she is. She is a great hostess.
Speaker 1: So all I do is floating her weight only.
Speaker 2: About being shy that you say that I would not
Speaker 2: know that about you, and you might not know that
Speaker 2: about me, because of course where I'm out there, but
Speaker 2: there is a real you. And I stand outside sometimes
Speaker 2: didnner party, think do I actually want to go in?
Speaker 1: You know, I've spent hours in the car parties, and
Speaker 1: you know, a dreading going in, and I certainly hate
Speaker 1: listening to the audience at my plays.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that. What do you mean listening to that?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that hearing their comments, I have absolutely
Speaker 1: no sense. You know. When I see a playwright standing
Speaker 1: in the fobby, in the lobby greeting the I'm absolutely
Speaker 1: amazed at there. And I have friends who don't have
Speaker 1: any nerves at all. You know, Christopher Hampton, who's a
Speaker 1: great friend of mine, sits at his plays with a
Speaker 1: sort of beam on his face of how well everything
Speaker 1: is going. Whereas I'm carving in terror and certainly run
Speaker 1: as fast as i can before I overhear terrible things, which.
Speaker 2: The playwright, by the way, always wonder whether you would
Speaker 2: hear the terrible things. But you're missing the good things,
Speaker 2: you know, You're assuming that they're going to say terrible things.
Speaker 2: But no.
Speaker 1: Very early on I wrote a play and I heard
Speaker 1: a man and he was leaving and his wife was
Speaker 1: just putting her around him and saying, I'm sorry, darling.
Speaker 1: That was my idea. I've never since then. And he
Speaker 1: was going, it's all right, I don't mind, I don't mind.
Speaker 1: We just wasted the evening. It was like that, And
Speaker 1: so you just don't listen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, in the River Cafe, because we have an
Speaker 2: open kitchen. When I'm cooking, what I do is I
Speaker 2: can see, you know, you can just see somebody's face.
Speaker 2: You can see how you know they they taste something,
Speaker 2: and then they look at their person next to them,
Speaker 2: and you think, what do they say? Are they saying
Speaker 2: if they say taste this, you know you can see
Speaker 2: them say, and then if they nod their head yes,
Speaker 2: so they nod their head no, or they beyond being
Speaker 2: hurt by it. No, I'm completely devastated. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: think I think I have a part of me is like, well,
Speaker 2: I know this was good, so why don't they.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things that said to me most
Speaker 1: that I find completely incomprehensible, They say to me, oh,
Speaker 1: you still care do you. Oh yeah, and that as
Speaker 1: if you Oh my goodness, I didn't think you'd be nervous.
Speaker 1: Oh but you've written so many plays. How can you
Speaker 1: possibly still be.
Speaker 2: Nervous because you're so expected.
Speaker 1: It's hard to explain you're more nervous now in my
Speaker 1: seventies than I was in my twenties, because I think
Speaker 1: when you're in your twenties, you've got a certain arrogance
Speaker 1: about what what Anthony Hopkins used to call stuffing the
Speaker 1: bastard down their throat. Other words, you just if you
Speaker 1: don't like it. Stuff you used to be the attitude
Speaker 1: when you're young. When you're older, it's it's harder to
Speaker 1: have that punk attitude as a playwright.
Speaker 2: And do you find that people sometimes feel they have
Speaker 2: to tell you the truth? Oh? Yeah, Richard had that,
Speaker 2: you know. I just think you should know that that
Speaker 2: last building, oh disappointing.
Speaker 1: People can't wait to tell you how disappointed they've been
Speaker 1: with your latest work. And it's and I listened to
Speaker 1: it in complete mystery. I'm not aware that I go
Speaker 1: up I would never go up to you and say
Speaker 1: I had a really terrible evening at the River Cafe.
Speaker 1: Just regard rude.
Speaker 2: I had somebody wrote to me the other day that say,
Speaker 2: I had a fantastic lunch at the River Cafe, and
Speaker 2: it was so good because the last few times I've
Speaker 2: been quite disappointing.
Speaker 1: Okay, exactly exactly, the kicking, the compliments.
Speaker 2: But then who do you live? Because I sometimes the
Speaker 2: people I wanted I want Back to Richard, I said, well,
Speaker 2: who do you want criticism, honest criticism from? Would it
Speaker 2: be another architect? Would it be? And he basically said,
Speaker 2: the people I work with. Yes, it's the people who
Speaker 2: you actually in the room working on it. You know.
Speaker 2: With that I will tell you and then you listen.
Speaker 1: I think that's what actors are doing, if the actors
Speaker 1: are any good. I mean, the whole point of choosing
Speaker 1: to work in a collaborative form is collaboration. And so
Speaker 1: I'm not a novelist. I've written some poetry, but it's
Speaker 1: a sideline. I've always worked in collaborative form.
Speaker 2: That's again similar, because that's right, and.
Speaker 1: What the actors are doing is putting intense scrutiny on
Speaker 1: your work so that the chances are that they will
Speaker 1: examine the work from one point of view you and
Speaker 1: which you may not have considered as deeply from each
Speaker 1: point of view as they do, and they say, if
Speaker 1: I say that in that scene, why am I doing
Speaker 1: that in that scene? How does that make sense? And
Speaker 1: you are crazy if you don't listen to them. There
Speaker 1: are certain authors, I'm afraid to say, who are too
Speaker 1: arrogant to listen to the actors. And there are also
Speaker 1: people who think that actors are always self interested and
Speaker 1: it's always about, oh, my part will be that I
Speaker 1: have a speech, my part will be better. But when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with great actors, which is been my fortune
Speaker 1: in life, you are crazy not to listen to them.
Speaker 1: And you're also crazy not to respond to them when
Speaker 1: they need something, because they sense that they need something.
Speaker 1: There was a wonderful A wonderful example was when I
Speaker 1: wrote Skylight and we were rehearsing it and Michael Gamban
Speaker 1: said this wonderful thing to me, where he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been on stage for two hours and I've got
Speaker 1: a feeling that when I go to the dressing room
Speaker 1: at the end of playing this play, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be very miserable and depressed. He said, could you just
Speaker 1: give me a line to get me out of this play.
Speaker 1: Such a beautiful note. And I gave him a last
Speaker 1: line before he left, and he just read it and
Speaker 1: he went fantastic. Now I will enjoy the evening after
Speaker 1: the play.
Speaker 2: But I wonder how many writers would do that.
Speaker 1: That's a great note. A note like that from an
Speaker 1: actor like Gambit, It's inspiring.
Speaker 2: I left a meeting the other day in New York
Speaker 2: and I was with It was about television and working together,
Speaker 2: and I was with this woman who's just very high
Speaker 2: up in the station. We had a long meeting of
Speaker 2: about an hour and it was you know. And when
Speaker 2: I left, I said, can I just ask you something?
Speaker 2: She said, yes, Ruthie, what do you want to ask me?
Speaker 2: I said, well, everybody's going to ask me how the
Speaker 2: meeting went. Can you tell me how it went.
Speaker 1: I try to give I try to give the actor
Speaker 1: an enjoyable evening. When I started, I used to write
Speaker 1: characters called barman or policeman, and that was somebody who
Speaker 1: was in for an evening that was completely unrewarding. They
Speaker 1: were going to walk onto the stage for two minutes
Speaker 1: and say yes sir, or can I get you another scotch?
Speaker 1: And you've got to think of it from the actor's
Speaker 1: point of view about what a miserable evening that is
Speaker 1: for an actor. And I try to make every part
Speaker 1: worth playing, and there is some point to playing the part,
Speaker 1: and there's something, even if it's a small part, that
Speaker 1: there's something there that is worth it for the actor.
Speaker 1: And I've tried to do that and it makes for
Speaker 1: a much stronger feeling to the evening. But I want
Speaker 1: to tell I want to tell the one story about
Speaker 1: food and the performing arts, which is that I wrote Damage,
Speaker 1: which was based on the Josephine Hart novel and was
Speaker 1: directed by Louis mau who I adored and who to me,
Speaker 1: was just one of the nicest people I ever met
Speaker 1: in my life. And he also knew a lot about
Speaker 1: food and loved good food. I think he came to
Speaker 1: eas at your ask. It's a domestic drama, like a
Speaker 1: Greek tragedy. And when I've finally written the script and
Speaker 1: I sent him the script, he said to me, it
Speaker 1: is everything that filmmakers hate most. And I said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean. He said, your script is based around
Speaker 1: seven meals and seven fucks, and the two things filmmakers
Speaker 1: hate most are meal scenes and fuck scenes, and you've
Speaker 1: offered me seven of each. That's very funny, And I said, yes,
Speaker 1: that's how the thought is structure. He said, oh god,
Speaker 1: I've got to think of new ways of doing both.
Speaker 2: I remember the scene from Tom Jones, but that was
Speaker 2: a great Yeah, but that's a great See. That's the
Speaker 2: one that always.
Speaker 1: Tom Jones is a brilliant, brilliant, beautiful. It's the best
Speaker 1: food scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's partly because the actors are so wonderful,
Speaker 1: Albert Finny and Joyce Redmand. But what was so great
Speaker 1: about it was you really believe they were eating it
Speaker 1: and tasting it. And that's the mark of great actors
Speaker 1: is they're actually doing the thing that they're meant to
Speaker 1: be doing, Whereas usually on a film set, the food
Speaker 1: is very tired and it's been around, and it's been
Speaker 1: under the lights, and you know, people bring fresh but
Speaker 1: there's very little sensual pleasure in a meal that you're filming,
Speaker 1: whereas on Tom Jones, who really believed people are relishing
Speaker 1: what they eating.
Speaker 2: Since you talked about your mother, was she there for
Speaker 2: your success as a playwright, She knew about it, she
Speaker 2: shared it.
Speaker 1: When she died, we found that she had kept a
Speaker 1: clipping book about everything nice. And what's extraordinary is that
Speaker 1: she was incredibly proud of my really worst reviews, and
Speaker 1: in the clipping book would be appalling play by David
Speaker 1: hare Right, terrible, a ghastly night at the theater. But
Speaker 1: my mother didn't mind. She didn't mind because it meant
Speaker 1: that I existed. And she would occasionally make some remark
Speaker 1: like she'd say, I remember how one saying to me
Speaker 1: that Bernard Levin he really doesn't like and I said, no,
Speaker 1: he really doesn't like me. But nevertheless she kept all
Speaker 1: Bernard Levin's appalling reviews. It was a very odd kind
Speaker 1: of pride. It didn't worry how what was said. It
Speaker 1: was just proof that I existed. She said, the most
Speaker 1: wonderful thing about my first play, which was absolutely filthy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just, you know, the language was filthy,
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of sex references, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of there was some sex between women, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was really quite a difficult evening for
Speaker 1: my parents, and my mother's most gracious way of dealing
Speaker 1: with it was to say, at the end, she said,
Speaker 1: well I enjoyed it very much, dear, though your father
Speaker 1: having been in the Navy understood rather more of it
Speaker 1: than I did.
Speaker 2: I have my father. Do you remember the actor Eli Wallack. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so my father was friends from Brooklyn. He grew up
Speaker 2: with the Wallacks. Eli always played the role of the
Speaker 2: bad guy. You know, he was like he certainly looked
Speaker 2: like a bad guy, and he was in a lot
Speaker 2: of Westerns. And so they would take his mother, who
Speaker 2: was an immigrant from Russia or Hungry, into these movies.
Speaker 2: And she came out of a movie once and she
Speaker 2: said to her friend, I'm not going to any more
Speaker 2: movies where people clap when Eli is killed. You know,
Speaker 2: are you writing now? Are we allowed to ask you
Speaker 2: that question? Somebody said, never ask it right of what
Speaker 2: they're doing, or an actor what they're acting, what they're
Speaker 2: John Osbourne, what did he say?
Speaker 1: It was John Osbourne's famous line is nobody shas to
Speaker 1: an accountant, done any interesting accounts late?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: I've written three plays and I'm waiting for them to
Speaker 1: go on good. It takes forever because people have lost
Speaker 1: their nerve. There's a post COVID terror has Partly, of course,
Speaker 1: the audience is not back for straight players in the
Speaker 1: same numbers. Secondly, there is a sort of feeling that
Speaker 1: nobody can quite knows what to do. And then thirdly,
Speaker 1: people are just moved to make it feel more like
Speaker 1: the film industry, so that the idea that a writer
Speaker 1: can just write a play and send it in and
Speaker 1: will be ahead of taste when they do that. Now
Speaker 1: it's like the film industry. The producer rings you up
Speaker 1: and saying, will you write a play about such and such?
Speaker 1: I've got this idea for a play, can you write
Speaker 1: this for me? And that the whole beauty of the
Speaker 1: theater was that it used to not be that, Whereas
Speaker 1: I'm afraid now there's a television series, would you like
Speaker 1: to write a play based on that television series? You know,
Speaker 1: there's a musical? Would you like to write? And it's
Speaker 1: people ringing you up saying will you do this? Whereas
Speaker 1: the idea that a person, man, woman, child, whatever sits alone,
Speaker 1: comes up with their own idea, sends it in and
Speaker 1: you are excited to put it on that I'm afraid
Speaker 1: is passing a little.
Speaker 2: My last question to you is a question I ask
Speaker 2: everyone on the podcast. If you had a food you
Speaker 2: wanted for comfort, if you were in a situation where
Speaker 2: you wanted something to eat that would make you feel happier, calmer, better.
Speaker 2: Is there a comfort food that you go Would it
Speaker 2: be the food that you grew up something from? Oh
Speaker 2: what would it be?
Speaker 1: I to do sol Monia?
Speaker 2: Would you?
Speaker 1: I think so monia. I've had it here actually quite recently.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we cook it in the wood oven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you don't you don't do it in batter.
Speaker 1: Do you do the soul, but you don't do the money?
Speaker 1: The money. Yeah, that's the thing that makes you feel
Speaker 1: that old is well with. I think sol monia that's
Speaker 1: my death row meal.
Speaker 2: Okay, well we're not dying. We're getting comfort and now
Speaker 2: we're going to go and have it. We can have
Speaker 2: it over so it might not be, but we can
Speaker 2: make it any way you want. Thank you, David Hare,
Speaker 2: thank you, it's good.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table for in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair