Toast opens with a woman (played by Jude Green) sitting on a waiting-room chair. She’s having a frustrating conversation with a call-centre worker whose voice sounds ominously from behind us.
“What jobs have you applied to this month?” they ask. The woman answers the Universal Credit helpline caller with a list of acting gigs and various odd jobs, most of which were unpaid.
As they negotiate on benefits and talent agency bookings, and as Green’s character is advised to find a more ‘realistic’ job than that of a struggling artist, we follow this squabbling pair through bouts of anger, despair, and utter delirium. Their various interactions could span across a few months or even years; it’s hard to tell in the show’s dizzying time warp.
This simple, slightly absurdist play is perhaps the most thought-provoking thing I have seen at Fringe so far. Jude Green shines as a performer whose writing captures the lives of those living below the poverty line in modern Britain — a topic often left untouched at Fringe.
In the hour this play takes up, Green makes the hard task of audience engagement feel effortless. With no props to aid her plot, the show’s dialogue works on its own to keep you enthralled as Green delivers a masterclass in breaking the fourth wall without it feeling too performative or strained.
At one point in the play, as the call-worker guides Green’s character through a looping script of questions and answers about her taxes, monthly expenses, and ability to work, they snarkingly comment on the show’s spiralling format “God, this isn’t Waiting for Godot is it?”
Ironically, the call worker is right. Toast is a real-life Waiting for Godot. Green’s character is stuck in a place they cannot escape: a helpline phone call. They ask the same questions and hear the same robotic answers, offering no solace, only aggravation. In this way, Green revamps Beckett’s play to mirror a conversation millions of people living in poverty have had to endure time and time again.
It’s that creative messaging which makes this show a Fringe must-see, if you’re looking for something a little abstract that tells a very real story about the cost-of-living crisis in modern Britain.
Toast is running everyday until 16 August at the Dissection Room in Summerhall. Buy your tickets here.
Image provided as press material.
