Nigel Slater’s Toast has been a success all round, first as a bestselling book, then as a film, and now as a highly-acclaimed play, which has just finished a run in London and is off on tour. Adapted by Henry Filloux-Bennett from Nigel Slater’s 2003 memoir of the same name, Toast is an evocative, quintessentially-British, coming-of-age play focussed around Slater’s relationships with food, which ultimately impact on every other aspect of his life.

The play opens with 9-year-old Nigel, played by Giles Cooper reading recipes from his family’s only cookbook, and with his mother telling him that he should make things how he likes them, not how the recipe tells him. She has no great affection for the kitchen, but it’s clear that her son enjoys baking, so she lets him help her to make jam tarts, Christmas cake, mince pies. This is a love story – both one between a child and his mother, but also between a child and food. Nigel says ‘It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you’, and (in a beautiful piece of staging) the whole auditorium is full of the smell of toast, which lingers throughout the show, changing subtly to the smell of pipe tobacco when his father is on stage. This immersive element to the production is wonderful – the cast also passes out sweet treats to the audience throughout the show, drawing the audience into the performance further. There is a rustling of sweet wrappers throughout the room that would normally be irritating at the theatre, but in this case, gives a feeling of community and sharing, which is quite special.

Nigel’s life changes abruptly when his mother’s chronic asthma takes its toll; she dies and he is left alone with his temperamental father. Nigel hopes to win his father over with his baking and jam making, but when Joan Potter, a woman his father meets at ladies’ night at the Freemasons, comes into their lives, with her obsession for cleanliness, and her exquisite lemon meringue pie, Nigel struggles to compete for his father’s affections. His desire to bake and his ‘good crumb’ in his school’s Home Economics classes has him labelled a ‘nancy boy’, although he doesn’t allow this to put him off his quest to become a proper cook, eventually finding a job in a local kitchen, and then, after his father’s death, moving to London to work at the Savoy. The second half of the play speeds up the timeline, perhaps a fraction too fast, but we see a child growing into a young man, finding his place in the world, coming to terms with his sexuality, and breaking away from the class and social restrictions placed on him.

This play is warm-hearted and excellently produced and acted – Katy Federman as Nigel’s mum, in particular, is wonderful. If you want a tale of the difficulties of growing up, tempered with a burst of nostalgia, I recommend Toast – just make sure you eat dinner beforehand, as all the food will make you hungry!   ★★★★☆     @Booking Around   28^th August 2019