Theatre: Matthew Kelly stars in stage play TOAST at Theatre Royal Nottm 4-9 April

Snapdragon Productions announce the full cast for the UK tour of their acclaimed revival of Toast by Richard Bean.  Accompanying Matthew Kelly and Simon Greenall are Will Barton, Steve Nicolson, Matt Sutton and John Wark, all reprising their roles from the 2014 Park Theatre run. Kieran Knowles is the sole new cast member who joins the company in the role of Dezzie.

The UK tour starts at the Rose Theatre Kingston on 4^th February and finishes at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham on April 9^th before the cast head to New York for the prestigious Brits off Broadway season. 

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…   

 

The play, which was Bean’s first to be professionally produced on stage, is based on the year he spent working in a mass production bread plant as a teenager, with each character inspired by someone he worked alongside.

Matthew Kelly said of the play, “Richard Bean’s Toast returns in 2016 touring to some of my favourite theatres in the UK before hitting New York in the spring.  It’s a big hearted, very funny, incredibly moving play about real people and I feel very honoured to be playing one of them again.”

In 2011 Richard Bean became the first writer to win the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for two plays, The Heretic and One Man, Two Guv’nors. He also received the 2011 Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play and 2012 Whatsonstage Award for Best New Comedy, both for One Man, Two Guv’nors. The New York production of One Man, Two Guv’nors was awarded the 2012 Outer Critics’ Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play. 2014 saw the world première of three of Bean’s projects: Nicholas Hytner directed Great Britain as a part of his final season at the National Theatre; Max Stafford-Clarke directed Pitcairn at Chichester Minerva Theatre / Shakespeare’s Globe; and Rupert Goold directed Made in Dagenham: The Musical at the Adelphi Theatre for which Bean has written the book. Bean’s other credits include Under the Whaleback (George Devine Award), The Heretic, Honeymoon Suite (Pearson Play of the Year), Harvest (Critic’s Circle Best New Play), The House of Games, a new version of The Hypochondriac, The Big Fellah, England People Very Nice and The Mentalists, The English Game, Up on Roof, Pub Quiz is Life, In the Club, The God Botherers, Mr England.

Matthew Kelly plays Nellie. For theatre, his credits include Cinderella, (Richmond Theatre), Volpone, Love’s Sacrifice, The Jew of Malta (RSC), Twelfth Night (Liverpool Everyman), To Sir With Love (Royal & Derngate and UK tour), The History Boys (Sheffield Crucible), The Seagull (Southwark Playhouse), God of Carnage (Nuffield, Southampton), Educating Rita (Menier Chocolate Factory and Edinburgh Festival), Legally Blonde, Spamalot (UK tours), Buried Child (Curve Leicester), Waiting For Godot (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Sign Of The Times and Lend Me A Tenor – The Musical (both West End), Comedians (Lyric Hammersmith), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Trafalgar Studios), Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare’s Globe), Victory (Arcola Theatre), Amadeus (Wilton’s Music Hall), Mirandolina (Manchester Royal Exchange), Endgame (Liverpool Everyman), Forgotten Voices (Riverside Studios) and Of Mice and Men (Birmingham Repertory Theatre and West End – Olivier Award for Best Actor). For television, his work includes Cold Blood, Bleak House, Egypt: The Pharaoh And The Showman and The Temple Of The Sands, Moving On, Benidorm, MI High, My Family At War, Forensic Casebook, City Hospital and Stars in their Eyes; and for film, Showreel, Tribute, Two Stops To Bank and Tortoise.

Director Eleanor Rhode trained at Mountview and the National Theatre Studio and is a former Staff Director at the National Theatre. Her recent productions include When We Were Women (Orange Tree), Teddy (Southwark Playhouse), Toast and Thark (Park Theatre), Generous, The Drawer Boy, and A Life (all Finborough Theatre). Her international work includes the World Premiere of the musical For All That (Centerstage, Seattle). 

Producer Sarah Loader and Director Eleanor Rhode co-founded Snapdragon Productions in 2009, and are currently developing a new adaptation of Gorky’s Vassa with playwright Luke Barnes, and an original play, Boudica with playwright Tristan Bernays.