Theatre News

Park Theatre stages revival of Richard Bean's Toast

The play, set in a bread factory, was first seen at the Royal Court in 1999

Playwright Richard Bean
Playwright Richard Bean
© Dan Wooller

The Park Theatre will stage the first London revival of Richard Bean's play Toast later this year.

The 1999 play, 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.

Bean, whose subsequent credits include The Heretic and One Man, Two Guvnors, 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 revival is produced by Snapdragon, who have previously staged Ben Travers' Thark and Paul Herzberg's The Dead Wait at the Park.

Snapdragon artistic director Eleanor Rhode will direct Toast, which runs in Park200 from 29 August to 21 September 2014 (previews from 27 August).