Words: Kiera Harper
4 Stars
Taking place across multiple calls with Universal Credit, Toast follows its writer and performer, Jude Green, struggling through the system while trying to be a working creative. This play brilliantly depicts the life of a working-class artist struggling to choose between their art and survival.
From the outset, the tension unfolds as the Universal Credit agent asks the same questions, with each check-in growing increasingly distorted. Green’s character is repeatedly asked whether she is looking for a job and if she really wants to stick with acting since it’s unpredictable. Toast emphasises that creative jobs are unreliable, but that normal jobs in the current job market are as well.
The tension moves the story along well, making it satisfying any time Green’s character breaks, whether that’s by making a Catherine Tate-like joke or threatening to throw a chair, which she’s warned will only make her into the violent poor person stereotype. While speaking for the struggling artist, the play also sheds light on the agent over the phone, who upholds this broken system but isn’t too different from the one seeking universal credit; the only difference is they have a job, one that can be taken away at any moment.
Although repetitive, as this experience is in real life, the show is structured well with moments of reflection between calls, like Green’s character happily recalling trips to Tesco with her family on payday, only to remember she’d follow behind with a calculator, working out the cost, hurtfully reminding herself and the audience that the cycle can seemingly never be broken.
Toast is a self-reflective, funny and necessary play about broken systems that will resonate with all working-class creatives struggling to live ,and aims to remind them that their passion is a real job.
Toast
Dissection Room at Summerhall
12:10
6th – 16th August