NIGEL SLATER’S TOAST

By Kelly Jackson | @kellyjackson88 | Press Invite

I have a confession to make: before I went to see “Toast”, I’d not heard of Nigel Slater. It’s weird because I do love reading articles by people like Giles Coren, so you would think Nigel Slater would have appeared on my radar at some point. But I guess it’s down to the lack of availability of the Observer in Basildon, Essex that I went into Toast with only a small few keywords fizzing around in my brain. Food critic. Writer. Cook. Chef? Or not a chef? I always get confused at what the difference is between a cook and a chef. “Never mind”, I thought to myself, they will probably clear that up in the play.

Last time I went to the Richmond Theatre I spoke about how much I liked it and nothing has changed (although we did have to wait half an hour in one hundred and seventy-degree heat before we went in). I appreciate that sometimes on the opening night these things can happen, but the area we stood in for thirty minutes was DANGEROUSLY hot. They didn’t have a fan or any air con either, I thought I was going to faint. But there are way more positives than negatives to the Richmond Theatre, positives like our AMAZING seats which were in the stalls behind someone I will come back to later.

The story starts with Nigel and his Mum doing some baking. Nigel’s idyllic life had everything in it a young boy could want. A Mum and Dad all to himself with no siblings to share them with. Constant baking sessions with his Mum making jam tarts. A gardener who was pretty easy on the eye (trust me that’s something I would include if I had an idyllic life). We follow young Nigel as he grows up against the backdrop of Wolverhampton in the sixties ad starts to learn things about who he is as he grows up. Trips to the sweet shop are a regular occurrence in the Slater family, so you can tell Nigel had that little bit more than most others during that period between the sixties and eighties.

The lead actor, who plays Nigel, who narrates our story, has a fantastic talent for portraying genuine child-like innocence and getting the audience to suspend their disbelief that this isn’t a fully grown adult man playing a nine-year-old boy. I’m not going to go into the story because it’s a good one, and sometimes even the smallest detail can be a spoiler if you are looking forward to seeing something. You can imagine how glad I was that I didn’t read Nigel’s story before I went. Having it told to me by a group of actors that talented was an absolute pleasure.

It also helped somewhat that one of the actors who played the gardener Josh and a few minor roles was one of the best looking men I have seen in real life (I have already Twitter stalked him and he has a girlfriend). On a serious note though, this play only has a handful of actors and every single one of them is talented. I’ve often found plays with a narrator a bit cringey, and the only time I’ve ever seen it work without being tacky is in Woman in Black at the Fortune, and now at Toast. The production was fantastic too, I know I said I wouldn’t ruin it for you, but make sure you take your best smelling nostrils and sit at the front.

Now the one thing you are probably wondering is why on earth the play is called “Toast”. I feel I can ruin this one for you, as, to be honest, it’s in all of the marketing material. You see Nigel explains that his Mother, although she loves cooking, is a hopeless cook. Whenever she burns the over-adventurous dinners she is trying out her and Nigel ends up just having toast. Simple, yet effective!

I’d highly recommend going to see this on the tour. It was so good the actors got a standing ovation. I’m usually quite oblivious to everything around me, but I had to “excuse me” the guy sat in front of me because he was standing in the way of my popcorn at the interval. When I got on the tube I was so keen to find out how much of the play was true and having a good old Google up and guess what? It was only Nigel Slater!