Toast – reviews of 'vivid' Richard Bean revival

What you need to know

A revival of Richard Bean's Toast has opened at the Park Theatre, London. First performed in 1999, Toast was a breakthrough play for Bean, who went on to write West End hit One Man, Two Guvnors and, most recently, Great Britain.

The play, based on Bean's own experiences in a bread factory in Hull, tells the story of a group of factory workers, including ageing bread-mixer Walter and a mysterious student called Lance, who struggle to keep their spirits up while trying to save their jobs as management threatens to shut their decrepit operation down.

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Eleanor Rhode directs a cast including Matthew Kelly as Walter and John Wark as Lance. Runs until 21 September.

What the critics like

This "excellent and highly welcome revival" has plenty of humour and moments of deeper feeling, says Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph. The superb Kelly is mesmerising, but all the performances are vivid, and the play's mixture of robust humour and sudden moments of tense drama proves constantly compelling.

Toast is "a small and vivid piece, packed with Bean's now familiar gallows humour", says Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard. Performed with appealing simplicity, it feels like an ode to ordinariness.

Bean has gone on to write bigger plays, but "he has written few better than this", says The Guardian. Rhode's production evokes the idea of factory work as both a curse and a blessing and all the characters are vividly particularised.

What they don't like

Critics have almost no criticisms of the play. On the Arts Desk Caroline Crampton notes that it's hard to know or understand what the character Lance is or what he wants, but "the play deliberately avoids inquiring too deeply" because, as long as you've got work and some mates to do it with, you're doing alright.