Matthew Kelly to star in Toast at Nottingham's Theatre Royal

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...

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Toast, Richard Bean’s first play to be professionally produced on stage, comes to Nottingham’s Theatre Royal from April 4 -9, before it takes to the stage in New York as part of Brits on Broadway.

The play is based on the year its award winning writer, Richard Bean, spent working in a mass production bread plant as a teenager, with each character inspired by someone he worked alongside.

Matthew Kelly, who plays Nellie, said: “It’s the story of seven incredible (and real) blokes in bakery in Hull 1975. “It was during the days when health and safety wasn’t an issue and into their midst comes a strange man. Who is he really and are his predictions of imminent death really true?

“My part is Walter ‘Nellie’ Nelson, a man who has worked at the factory all his life.

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“He is like the walking dead but is the emotional heart of the play.

“It’s a big hearted, incredibly moving play about real people within a real community and I feel very honoured to be playing one of them again.

“Oh, and of course it’s very funny.”

The play also stars Will Barton as Colin and Simon Greenall as Cecil.

Click here or visit www.trch.co.uk for tickets.

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