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A CurtainUp 
London Review
London ReviewToast
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Nellie: Where are you from?
Lance: The other side. From across the metaphorical water. Nellie: What Grimsby? |
John Wark as Lance and Matthew Kelly as Walter (Photo: Ben Broomfield) |
The play opens on a Sunday evening when the factory boss the lecherous Mr Beckett isn't in attendance. In the rest room, charge hand Blakey (Steve Nicholson) is working out the shift rota and our first opportunity to laugh is at the later repeated joke as to how to lob a stewed tea bag accurately at an overflowing waste basket. The waste bin is surrounded by those that missed their target.
Enter Colin (Will Barton) trade union shop steward and paying out the union strike pay from the two week strike a few weeks ago. Bean allows each character to enter so we can establish his personality. Younger Peter (Matt Sutton) in flared jeans and 70s patterned shirt, and older Cecil (Simon Greenall) in full immaculate baker's whites, play at crotch grabbing the other unawares, so the victim howls with testicular pain. Dezzie (Finlay Robertson) is an ex fisherman, a deckhand, with a sexually active wife and a need to get home!
But it is the entrance of lanky Matthew Kelly as Nellie, full name Walter Nelson, who mesmerizes as the 59 year old bread mixer. With his hairy arms covered in flour and his vest and shirt crusty with bread dough, he is a vision and not a hygienic one. His brown boots have no laces and I immediately think of Pinter's "Caretaker" with his concern about the laces. Nellie does everything at a very slow and deliberate pace, a shuffling gait, lighting his rationed cigarettes, 20 a week, or peeling the cheese out of his sandwiches and throwing away the bread and answering questions with one monosyllabic word. I suppose if you work in a bread factory, the bread may not be that appetizing. Watching him slowly chew at the cheese gives us a glimpse into his sad life. With a holiday coming up which Peter uncovers will be in a caravan parked in a field while Walter picks potatoes, the pathos is complete.
With an extra order for 3000 loaves coming in from Bradford, the shift will be at breaking point. Lance (John Wark) a slightly strange mature student with a quaint line in conversation will be on ovens for the first time. Besides learning about the bread making process, we are looking at more modern plants taking over the industry and jobs at stake and how these workers will react with loyalty to each other or opportunism. When the aged oven seizes up, they all realize their jobs are at risk and fixing it is dangerous because of the high temperatures.
The skill of Richard Bean is to allow us to laugh at the same time appreciating the seriousness of these men's battle to keep employed. The playwright will go on to write about the fishing industry and despite the dark comedy there is usually an intelligent issue worth debating in his original work, along with the sense of impending change and loss. It is his power of observation which brings these real life people onstage as well as the mischievous sense of the ridiculous in his wit.
Designer James Turner's set is authentic back room worn out, shabby industrial. Well directed by Eleanor Rhode, who directed The Drawer Boy at the Finborough, and with all the actors managing credible Yorkshire accents, with the flat delivery of the jokey that is peculiar to that county, Toast is a richly buttered slice of real life.
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| Toast
Written by Richard Bean Directed by Eleanor Rhode Starring: Matthew Kelly, Steve Nicolson With: Will Barton, Matt Sutton, Simon Greenall, Finlay Robertson, John Wark Designer: James Turner Lighting: Mike Robertson Sound Design : Max Pappenheim Running time: Two hours 05 minutes with an interval Box Office 020 7870 6876 Booking to 21st September 2014 Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 29th August 2014 performance at The Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London N4 3JP (Rail/Tube: Finsbury Park) |
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