TOAST

Another Sunday night shift. The smell of bread baking. The industrial thump, thump, thump of the machines that never stop. The ovens are cranked up to full blast, the factory is humming, and everyone wants to be somewhere else. But this shift is going to be different. Because when a crisis hits the factory, the men have more to lose than just their wages. Following the smash sell out production in London and UK tour, Richard Bean’s (One Man, Two Guvnors) hilarious and brilliantly observed play arrives in New York for a strictly limited Brits Off Broadway engagement.

TOAST, Richard Bean’s first major play, was originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 1999. The Snapdragon production marks the play’s the first major revival in London, and the Brits Off Broadway run marks its US premiere. The play, which was called “a fine piece of work: a tender, ambivalent portrait of working class men raging against the dying of the light” by Time Out London, is loosely based on Bean’s experiences working at a bread factory in Hull when he was 18 years old.

The stellar cast of TOAST features a veritable Who’s Who of British theater. Olivier Award-winner Matthew Kelly (Of Mice and Men in the West End) leads the cast as Nellie. He is joined by Simon Greenall (I’m Alan Partridge for the BBC), Steve Nicolson (War Horse at the National Theatre), Will Barton (Bedtime Stories at the Stephen Joseph Theatre), Kieran Knowles (Operation Crucible at Finborough Theatre), Matt Sutton (The Ladykillers at the New Vic), and John Wark (Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us for the National Theatre of Scotland).