Judd Hirsch doesn't know about "chip butties" - french fries between two pieces of bread, and a culinary specialty in his chosen home for the moment, Scarborough.
But he does recognize a great role in the theater, which is why this New York actor is spending the fall in Yorkshire reprising a performance that has galvanized Broadway and Los Angeles."This is one I think the author deserves," Hirsch, 59, said of his decision to star once again in "Conversations With My Father," the Herb Gardner drama that won him the 1992 Tony Award for best actor.
On Broadway, Hirsch played barman Eddie Ross - the irascible Jewish "father" of the title - for 11 months, followed by a further three in Los Angeles. When the offer came to make his British stage debut far from London's West End, Hirsch could not refuse.
"My love is the theater," Hirsch, an alumnus of TV's popular sitcom "Taxi," said one recent lunchtime during rehearsals at the Stephen Joseph Theater, where he starts performances Wednesday in the 303-seat playhouse. Opening night is Oct. 25.
"I mean, if you could teach me Russian, I would love to go to Moscow and play (the part), but I don't know Russian - or to Beijing, if I spoke Chinese," he said.
The Scarborough drawing card was Stephen Joseph's artistic director, Alan Ayckbourn, a prolific English dramatist with 40 or so plays to his credit, and a noted director as well.
"This man's been working at this theater how many years, like 30?" said Hirsch between bites of a tuna "sarnie" - Yorkshire-speak for "sandwich."
"He certainly knows how to do plays, how to direct plays, even other people's plays."
Accordingly, the actor uprooted wife Bonni and 6-month-old daughter, Montana Eve, from Manhattan to Scarborough, a community of 50,000 about which Hirsch admitted total ignorance.
"I didn't know what Scarborough was," said Hirsch. "Nobody sent me pictures; they didn't even send me a map. It was up to me to find it."
In a separate interview, Ayckbourn, 55, chuckled as he recalled faxes to the actor attempting to define Scarborough.
The concern, Ayckbourn said, was that "it might have been misinterpreted as a Florida resort in off-season - huge, beautiful houses with verandas and patios left empty as residents go back to Lon-don."
The truth was more mundane.
"For patios and verandas, read `bed and breakfast,' " said Ayck-bourn. "The population is fairly stable. These are not people who all take off and go back to London; they let out their store room to guests."
None of which seemed to be bothering Hirsch as he finished his second week of rehearsals. Nor was he at all bored by watching a mostly British supporting cast come to terms with a text - and with accents - which to him are second-nature.
"I haven't lost my patience yet. I probably won't," said Hirsch, who has some precedent for his current assignment. He played the 81-year-old Nat in Gardner's "I'm Not Rappaport," for which he won the 1986 best actor Tony.
But while that play went on to be seen internationally, "Conversations" has had a slower trajectory. Hirsch felt he owed it to the author, a longtime friend, to help launch the play in Europe.
"This is the one that should have been gobbled up," said the actor, who said "Conversations" has yet to be seen in such "usual Gardner haunts" as France and Israel.
A successful English run, he said, could lead to "a springboard effect into Europe."
But might the play be too Jewish for most audiences beyond obvious centers such as New York, where it unfolds across 40 years on the Lower East Side?
In an interview from New York, the playwright stressed its universality.
"To me it's any family anywhere," said Gardner, 59, who came to fame in the early 1960s with his play, "A Thousand Clowns."
"Even though anti-Semitism is an issue, the play has to do with any group that feels isolated.
"It played for a month in Salt Lake City in a 1,000-seat theater to nothing but Mormons," Gardner said of his play, which began its pre-Broadway run in Seattle - a city, he said, with a Jewish population of less than 1 percent. "My hope is what's true in Seattle and Salt Lake City would be true in England."
And Gardner seemed confident that Ayckbourn - who is neither a New Yorker nor Jewish - would do his play justice.
"I'm delighted at the words `Alan Ayckbourn is doing my play,' " said the author. "I can see that it means something to him; I have that instinct."
As for his star's adaptability? There, too, Gardner was sounding sanguine: "Judd is a very open actor. He'll go wherever Alan feels it should go."