Toast is the charming coming-of-age memoir about TV chef Nigel Slater. It is the story of his tragic childhood starting at age seven though to manhood at age seventeen. It is a poignant, sad tale of love, loss and the pleasure of food.
This single set production portraying the kitchen in the Slater family home in middle-class suburbia of Wolverhampton utilises stage props of kitchen cupboards on wheels, allowing the cast to move them about, dance on them and even cook on one of them. There’s also a functioning toaster and a working hob which is used to actually cook a recipe of Slater's which he created when he was seventeen. A large oversized fridge also serves as a door into the kitchen.
Walking into the auditorium the smell of burnt toast prevailed. After having read Slater's autobiography some time ago and having thoroughly enjoyed it, I was looking forward to this stage adaptation by Henry Filloux-Bennett, which tells the story using not only the written and spoken word along with the prowess of the actors but also utilises the nostalgia of the tastes and smells Slater grew up with. A plus for sweet lovers was that theatre-goers in the first couple of front rows were treated to a selection of 1960’s confectionery during one part of the play (“Penny” sweets such as Swizzles, Love Hearts, and Parma Violets) which they were encouraged to pass along to those sitting beside them and Walnut Whips at another integral part of the piece. Sweet wrappers being taken off sweets and the crunching of boiled sweets could be heard for a while afterwards.
The play relies heavily on Giles Cooper as Slater with his first-person narration, plus an accomplished performance by Katy Federman as Mum and an excellent portrayal by Blair Plant as Dad. All are talented performers and believable in their roles who tackle the major events in Slater’s life authentically, covering the early death of his mum and his strained, often unpleasant relationship with his grieving, increasingly violent dad. It also portrays England emerging from the rationed austerity of the 1950s into the bold new world of exotic cookery and sexual freedom.
Slater as a nine-year-old boy finds joy in his family kitchen, reading the recipes in the Marguerite Patten cookbook (something I could identify with as having used the same book during early married life in the 1970s), growing radishes and discovering the exotic, mystifying dish of apaghetti Bolognese for the first time,. Plus having to learn how to retain spaghetti on his fork and actually eat it. His most pleasurable pastime is baking with the love of his life, his mother, particularly jam tarts and mince pies at Christmas. But when asthma, her long-standing illness, takes her life Nigel must learn how to navigate the difficulties of growing up, grieving and discovering his identity as a young man through the memories and recipes she leaves behind in his recollections of her.
Slater’s privileged upbringing of holidays in Bournemouth, learning first-hand how to grow vegetables from their gardener and his cosy, closeted world sharing the AGA cooker with his mother turns upside down after her death when his patriarchal, homophobic father meets and marries Mrs Potter, originally their cleaner, a woman so far removed from his mother, except in her baking skills, who enters his life and changes it forever. Along with his father, she condemns his emerging sexuality with dismissive references to ‘nancy’ boys and his preference for making fruit pies over more masculine-defined pursuits. Domestic warfare with Mrs Potter, who he refuses to acknowledge as his step-mum, is embellished with a backdrop of music of Psycho Killer by Talking Heads. Nostalgic music from the 1960s is used throughout the production along with nostalgic references to Basildon Bond writing paper, Angel Delight dessert (Butterscotch flavour) and Mateus Rose wine, a firm favourite from the era.
After the death of his father, Slater aged seventeen, relishes his freedom and heads for London in pursuit of his culinary career. He acquires a job in the kitchens at the Savoy Hotel and thus his love of all things gastronomic begins.
Director Jonnie Riordan has used choreographed sequences, nostalgic 1960’s music, memories of the rigid rules of restaurant dining of the era, strained relationships with parents (which we can all identify with) and the engrossing love of food and use of taste buds to capture Slater’s early years of pleasure and pain. The pivotal scene at the end when Slater invents for the first time, a recipe and actor, Giles Cooper makes it from scratch on stage adds credibility to the performance not only as an authentic memoir but also as a sensory experience as the smell of garlic mushrooms on toast wafted around the auditorium. It was a fitting ending to a play well-seasoned with nostalgia and the experience of living through what life throws at us during childhood and being able to come through it into adulthood and in Slater’s case making a success from doing something he loves.
Reviewer - Anne Pritchard
on - 10/9/19
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