Toast, Richard Bean’s tale of a bread factory hit by a crisis, will be revived at the Park Theatre later this summer.
The first play to be professionally produced for the playwright, who also wrote award-winning hits One Man, Two Guvnors and The Heretic, the first major London revival of Toast will be staged by Park Theatre regulars Snapdragon Productions from 27 August to 21 September.
The autobiographical play, inspired by the year Bean spent working in a bread factory as an 18-year-old, tells the story of a very different Sunday night shift. The ovens are cranked up, the machines are whirring and everyone wants to be somewhere else, but when a crisis hits the men have more than their wages to lose.
Speaking about the play Bean, whose other shows include Under The Whaleback and Honeymoon Suite, said: “In Toast each character is based on a real person, something I’ve rarely done since. Although I’m not in the play myself, it is autobiographical, in the sense that this is the factory in which I worked and these are men I worked with. I hope the play honours these men, some of whom are now dead.”
The announcement of Toast’s revival adds to a summer/autumn that offers rich pickings for fans of Bean’s work. His latest play, Pitcairn, plays at Shakespeare’s Globe from late September, with the musical adaptation of Made In Dagenham, for which he has provided the book, beginning its West End run in October. He is also working on a new play to be staged at the National Theatre.