Cookbook

Dreaming over a cookbook - hard to beat as a pastime on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

The old Robin Hood cookbook, bound with a plastic coil and bursting with full-colour photographs, was one of my first readers. Mum taught me how to measure flour with a coffee mug and beat the eggs with a fork while we worked through the recipes together. With seven children in the house, cakes and cookies disappeared quickly.

A few years later, there was The Joy of Cooking. This compendium described how to make just about anything from scratch. It even made exotic things like Beef Stroganoff sound like something a normal person could make for supper... with rudimentary tools!

Then came The Canadian Living Cookbook(s)....

These days, between work and school, there's barely enough time to fling a few things into the crock pot. Spaghetti sauce is the fanciest recipe I get to cook. The fine points of Ratatouille and Roasted Red Pepper Dip do not fit into the timetable. Too bad polishing the cover of the cookbook doesn't call forth a genie-chef who would grant me three culinary wishes!

Well, for anyone who has ever wished for a skilled chef to actualize from the page of a wonderful-sounding recipe, CentreStage* (the little theatre with a big heart) has a sizzling new fricassee. It's a saucy recipe seasoned with piquant scenes, called Don't Dress for Dinner.** While they are sorry the play is over, audiences say, they are glad to relax their laugh muscles and breathe again.

Bernard (David Lane) books a cook for a special weekend and embroils himself, his old buddy, Robert (Franklin Sherrard); and the cordon bleu chef in a web of lies as illusional as M.C. Escher's "Relativity."*** No wonder cordon bleu Suzette (Trina Long) gets a little scrambled and everyone's favourite girlfriend, Suzanne (Mindy Vinqvist-Tymchuck), wears herself out trying to keep the secret of her special ingredient. With Jaqueline (Branaghlee Lane), the "ladies" make a few unexpected additions to the dish.

Robert's lies especially whip up a soufflé of plausible statements as frothy as Chef Suzy's meringue for the pavlova-delicious fun - even when you can't quite follow the logic. As often as Bernard and Robert trip over their Freudian slips, it's a sure bet they've cooked a few books together in their time! George (Ernie Robinson) can't help but stir the pot. This maybe the pinnacle of their deceptive art: I doubt Jacqueline would let them play so freely without that little bit of blackmail. Though no one gets burnt to a crisp, the scorch marks are visible.

However, as Robert says, "I'm so glad we've kept our friendship through all this;" the whole theatre breathes a relieved, "Phew!" as everyone agrees.

Make sure you indulge in this tasty treat! (Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. until May 17, with a Sunday matinee Mothers' Day. Call 678-8040 for reservations.) * www.centrestagetheatre.ca * * Written by Marc Camoletti, directed by Brian Stoddard *** http//www.eyetricks.com for this and other trompe-l'oiel