NIgel Slater’s Toast ☆☆☆☆
The Other Palace, London
Nigel is a nine year old boy growing up with his adoring mother and rather emotionally cold stepfather in Wolverhampton. Their mutual love of cooking is the highlight of every Friday afternoon for Nigel (played convincingly by Giles Cooper) and his mother (Lizzie Muncey bringing warmth and pathos to her role), and we watch them make jam tarts and mince pies. As a family they are gastronomically adventurous (this is the 60’s remember) and spaghetti bolognese is a challenge to eat as well as to their taste buds (“why does parmesan smell of sick?!”).
Toast started life as a book by Nigel Slater, then a film and is now presented here as a stage play by writer Henry Filloux-Bennett. It cleverly employs nostalgia as a trojan horse to soften you up before using very real and traumatic experiences to maximum effect. Tonight, when Nigel brandishes the seminal “Cookery in Colour” by Marguerite Patten, the elderly audience audibly gasped and appreciative murmurs filled the auditorium.
The play manages to rise to the challenge of how to present the seduction of smell and taste in the theatre not least by dishing out real food to the audience at various points in the action. Plates of warmed mini lemon cheesecakes are handed out on china plates (fluffy, zesty with a good crumbly base) and when endless striped paper bags of sweets (Lovehearts/Drumsticks) are distributed there is a rustling of packaging that is both abandoned and shameless.
The on-stage cooking element is achieved by some charming theatrical trickery and sleight of hand; flour and butter in a bowl miraculously turned into dough ball ready to be rolled; a tin of goo is put in the oven and then immediately thrust back out as a fully formed cake with candles.
The set design (by Libby Watson) conjures up the era well, with a vinyl floor in shades of beige and orange along with a freestanding duck egg blue fridge. By accident or design however, the kitchen where most of the action takes place is vast and curiously adds a sense of loneliness and isolation to the visual language.
We meet Josh the hunky gardener (Jake Ferretti) – who gets mum in a tizzy and intriguingly is a target of Nigel’s emerging sexuality – until dad barges in; “That’s quite enough gardening for today”. There is an ill-advised phase of voyeurism in the local layby, but as he gets older there is the promise of more positive and appropriate romantic liaisons and cooking looks like it will become his salvation. The play doesn’t shy away from quite horrendous experiences, however, such as terminal illness, bereavement and also the moment when the young Nigel is beaten by his stepfather is both powerful and upsetting in its staging.
Can food save the day? As Oscar Wilde says “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives”.
Nigel Slater’s Toast
Directed by Jonnie Riordan
https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/nigel-slaters-toast/
REVIEW: JONNY WARD 