Richmond Theatre – until 26 October 2019
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
4****
Back to the 1960s: we’re in a kitchen in Wolverhampton with a boy and his mum, happily cooking and larking about. Life is practically perfect, although dad can be rather hot-tempered. Mum burns the toast and can’t follow a recipe, but she radiates joy. There are friends, trips to the sweetshop, Christmas… Then mum dies, and a bleak adolescence follows.
This is the childhood of food writer Nigel Slater, adapted by Henry Filloux-Bennett from Slater’s autobiography Toast. It’s both very funny and awfully moving. Giles Cooper plays shorts-wearing schoolboy Nigel, frequently turning to the audience to comment on what’s going on. Katy Federman is the adorable, idealised 1960s mum. Flour flies, cakes and pies appear from the Aga, Dad (Blair Plant) gets twitchy about Nigel liking girlie sweets. At one point, the audience gets to share the sweets. You are right there with Nigel, in a home where cooking is beyond plain, but intensely sensitive to the scents, feel and flavours of food, and indeed everything else.
In the second half, an empty fridge sums up the void in his life, and a vampish stepmother appears. Joan (Samantha Hopkins) can actually cook, but turns food into a weapon of emotional warfare. Walnut Whips are eaten, and The Persuaders is on TV. With the help of ghastly cookery lessons at school and an angelic employer-mentor, Nigel discovers his art, grows up and moves out. At this point the theatre is filled with the tantalising scent of the garlic and mushrooms he has been cooking on stage, and we head home feeling more than a little peckish.
Come to think of it, this is all just like one of Nigel’s recipes – a deceptively simple, seemingly homely but meticulous and clever combination of emotional flavours. The play exactly captures the quality of Slater’s writing and television work. Jonnie Riordan directs, and the delicious kitchen set is by Libby Watson.