YOU know that sensation. Someone pops a slice of bread - or two, in the toaster and before long everyone in the room fancies a piece of toast with lashings of butter…

Well everyone can get a slice of toast, as well as a slice of life, by popping up at Malvern’s Festival Theatre later this month when the UK tour of the acclaimed revival of Richard Bean’s Toast, following a successful run at Park Theatre in 2014, arrives in the county for a week’s run from Monday, February 22 to Saturday, February 27.

Snapdragon, the production team behind the successful London stint have announced that the Olivier award-winning Matthew Kelly - together with Simon Greenall, will reprise their roles as Nellie and Cecil, alongside Will Barton, Steve Nicolson, Matt Sutton and John Wark, who are all returning to their roles from the 2014 Park Theatre run.

Kieran Knowles is the sole new cast member who joins the company in the role of Dezzie.

It’s 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.

This brilliantly observed moving and funny 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.

Matthew Kelly said: "Richard Bean's Toast returns this year touring to some of my favourite theatres in the UK before hitting New York in the spring. It’s a big hearted, very funny, incredibly moving play about real people and I feel very honoured to be playing one of them again."

In 2011 Richard Bean became the first writer to win the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for two plays, The Heretic and One Man, Two Guv’nors, and there have been other numerous credits to his name in recent years.

While Matthew Kelly is probably the most recognisable face, his fellow cast members also have plenty of tv roles on their cv along with numerous stage credits. 

Will Barton, who plays Colin, has been in New Tricks, City Lights and Doctor Who, while for film, his credits include The Theory of Everything (the story of the life of Stephen Hawking), and Simon Greenall, who plays Cecil, is perhaps best known for his role as Michael in the TV series I’m Alan Partridge. His other television work includes Cardinal Burns, W1A, Inspector George Gently and Lead Balloon.

Steve Nicolson who plays Blakey and John Wark (Lance) both have plenty of tv and film credits to their names too.