8 minute read
David Adams Plays With Cocktails
by shawfest
David Adams
Plays With Cocktails
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Chitra
A dozen years ago, while going through one of the proverbial ‘actor dry spells’ I decided to enroll in the Level One, Wine and Spirits Educational Trust, Sommelier course. I had always had an interest in wine (drinking, tasting and as an amateur winemaker) and loved the idea of learning more about pairing wine with food. I’ve continued that education (stalled in Level Three, due to the pandemic and an abundance of work!) and have thoroughly enjoyed exploring the world of spirits and cocktail alchemy. Living in the Niagara region and being in the heart of a burgeoning wine industry and a growing cornucopia of fine dining, has allowed me to continue my education and enjoy much opportunity to indulge this passion. Being in ‘Fruit Country’ has also encouraged me to experiment with infusing spirits with the local fruit as it comes ripe — yes, the strawberry infused vodka is infusing in my pantry as I write!
To celebrate the Shaw Festival’s 60th Anniversary Season, I thought it might be a fun exercise to pair the shows in the season with a classic cocktail. I’ll give my reasons for choosing the pairing (sometime my logic might be obtuse, but any excuse to imbibe while discussing a play seems a fabulous idea!), a little history or significance of the beverage and then a recipe, so you can try it for yourself, before or after the show!
David Adams
Sanjay Talwar and Alexis Gordon in The Doctor's Dilemma
Damn Yankees: Old Fashioned
Ingredients: rye or bourbon, sugar, Angostura bitters, orange slice and twist (optional) Inspired by Cory Sincennes’ fantastic screens of vintage advertisements on the set of Damn Yankees, the Old Fashioned seems to be a perfect choice for Joe Boyd’s cocktail as he watches the hapless Washington Senators blow a lead yet again!
The Old Fashioned is arguably one of the most commonly ordered cocktails. As well as being the cocktail of choice for Don Draper in the hit TV series Mad Men, in the movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the boozy pilot lets passenger Buddy Hackett fly the plane causing someone to ask, ’What if something happens?’ The pilot replies, “What could happen to an Old Fashioned?”!
Deborah Hay in Everybody
Gaslight: Negroni.
Ingredients: gin, Campari, sweet vermouth This taut thriller, which has come to mean an insidious form of mental abuse, reminds me of the surreptitious nature of this cocktail. It is sweet — but packs a punch. First mixed in 1919 in a cafe in Florence for General Pascal Olivier Count de Negroni, Orson Welles in a magazine article, says about the Negroni: “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other!”
The Importance of Being Earnest: Cosmopolitan
Ingredients: citrus vodka, Cointreau, fresh lime juice, cranberry juice Perhaps you learned about this cocktail during its peak of popularity from Sex and the City on HBO. I’ve always been struck by the sexiness of The Importance of Being Earnest. Of course, it’s all well-hidden in Victorian propriety, but lies just beneath the surface for almost all the characters! With its pink and frothy appearance, it may seem superficial and frivolous, which belies its complexity and efficacy.
Chitra: Mai Tai
Ingredients: rum, lime juice, rock candy syrup, Orgeat almond syrup, Orange Curaçao, mint sprig, and lime rind (optional) First off, there are a lot of different ways to make this drink, hence the reason why you may see this drink served in all colours of the sunset. In Tahitian, Mai Tai means “the best out of this world!”Chitra is colourful, tropical, exquisite, ethereal, sumptuous, pulchritudinous (love that word!) — all things that can be said of this charming cocktail.
Ingredients: whiskey, beer For no reason, this cocktail comes to mind in thinking about this incredible play by the master playwright August Wilson. If you want an unfussy drink that knows how to get the job done, go old-school with a Boilermaker. This straightforward whiskey and beer concoction, wherein the whiskey is dropped into the beer, found favour in the 1800s among factory workers — possibly those who fabricated the boilers of locomotive engines, hence the name. After coming off long, exhausting shifts, they understandably wanted a strong end to their day. That’s a nice origin story — and it may be the advent of the glass-in-a-glass combination — but it’s likely that people have been combining liquor and beer in some fashion ever since the two drinks entered ready circulation. My personal favourite combination is Writers’ Tears Irish Whiskey and locally made red Amber Ale from the Exchange Brewery.
Everybody: Martini
Ingredients: gin, dry white vermouth, olive or lemon peel. Shake the gin & vermouth vigorously over ice. Strain and pour into a cocktail glass. Garnish. The choice by lottery of most of the parts for Everybody — a fascinating and profound play — means there are an infinite number of possibilities of combinations of actor and role! A scary proposition for any actor — but one that might be able to be calmed with a Martini (afterwards of course!). This is the classic cocktail, and it can have an infinite number of iterations and variations depending on the bartender, the tastes of the drinker and special ingredients. Personally, I look forward to seeing as many of the variations of the play as I can, as I know they will all be very different, given the unique talents of each of the wonderful actors. The old joke that a Martini should be mixed with nothing but a rumour of vermouth, is best ignored. A true Martini should be a small drink, served cold in a small glass!
David Adams in Just to Get Married Ingredients: blended scotch, freshly squeezed lemon juice, honey, ginger syrup, Llagavulin or peaty single malt scotch, garnish with candied ginger. Shake blended scotch, lemon juice and ginger syrup over ice. Strain into a cocktail glass, float the Islay single malt scotch on top and garnish with candied ginger.
Penicillin was discovered by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. The cocktail was created quite recently by an Aussie bartender working in New York. It hints at the medicinal properties in the combination of ingredients, similar to a hot toddy. However, that seems as specious as many of the medical pontifications in The Doctor’s Dilemma! I love this cocktail as single malt peaty scotch is one of my favourite drinks — when I can afford it on an actor’s salary!
Just To Get Married: Kir Royale
Ingredients: Chambord or Crème de Cassis, Champagne/ White Wine/Prosecco/Cava There's a reason this cocktail has a luxurious name — this Champagne-based cocktail is either sweetened (and spiked) with a high-class, French black raspberry liqueur called Chambord or a blackcurrant liqueur called Crème de Cassis. The upper-crust family at the centre of Just To Get Married would be used to champagne, but the heroine of the story brings an element of challenge, impunity and cloudiness to their well-ordered world. Perhaps sipping a Kir Royale would be a civilized way of discussing suffragette philosophy with the archaic denizens of the household.
Too True to Be Good: Sidecar
Ingredients: Cognac/Armangnac, Cointreau, fresh lemon juice, orange peel, and sugar (optional) Not sure what inspired me to pair this cocktail with this play. Maybe it’s because Too True to Be Good is one of Shaw’s more oblique, eccentric plays and the characters are all a bit off-kilter.
This is the classic sour cocktail, which makes the sugar coating on the rim of the glass all that much more important.
A Year With Frog & Toad – in Concert: Mojito
Ingredients: white rum, simple syrup, club soda, fresh lime juice, mint leaves It’s green and contains mint leaves, so it sprung to mind when thinking of frogs and toads! Now I know the gentle creatures of this musical would most likely not imbibe, but if they would, this would be a perfect way to while away a few hours in the company of one’s best friend. This is one of the oldest alcoholic beverages in the books, with origins dating back to 16th century Cuba. Evidently, it was one of Ernest Hemingway's favourite cocktails.
David Adams is 1 of 11 Embedded Artists at the Shaw Festival. His shows in 2022 are Cyrano de Bergerac, The Doctor’s Dilemma and Just to Get Married.
Ingredients: vodka, ginger beer, lime juice garnished with a slice or wedge of lime. The Moscow Mule is popularly served in a copper mug, which takes on the cold temperature of the liquid. That is my point of connection. In our run of Cyrano we drank ale, wine, etc. from pewter mugs. They are valuable props because you can’t see into them. Hence, we could pretend we were drinking almost anything and one of the common bits of improvisation, was deciding exactly what that was — of course it changed for every performance!
Now you may agree or disagree about my choices of cocktail, and which show I’ve paired them with! As I said, it’s all rather arbitrary, but a fun way to think of the show and maybe to experiment with a new way to enjoy spirits. With the proliferation of cottage distilleries and the profusion of fine-dining spots popping up all over Niagara, I’m sure many new and exciting cocktails will be created this year.
If you were to visit me and want to chat about these choices, food pairing, your favourite wines and of course anything to do with THEATRE, we would most likely imbibe with my favourite 2022 cocktail…
60th Anniversary Season: The Lemon/ Ginger Martini
Ingredients: ¼ oz limoncello, ¼ oz ginger syrup, 1 ½ oz vodka, freshly squeezed lemon wedge. I would serve this with my favourite appetizer, curried meat puffs. Enjoy The Shaw Festival’s 60th Anniversary Season and your favourite cocktail!
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