MATTHEW Kelly is to star in Toast, which opens at the Oxford Playhouse this month.

Toast is the latest offering by Richard Bean, who penned the successful One Man, Two Guvnors.

It opens in Oxford on Tuesday, February 16, and runs until Saturday, February 20, before it heads off to New York.

Toast stars Olivier Award-winning actor Matthew Kelly and Alan Partridge’s Simon Greenall.

Set in a bakery in Hull in 1975, Toast tells the story of seven men working a normal shift when a strange man appears with predictions of imminent death.

It was a time when health and safety wasn’t an issue and a crisis hits the factory.

Talking to the Bicester Advertiser, Matthew said: “My part is Walter ‘Nellie’ Nelson, a man who has worked at the factory all his life.

“He is like the walking dead – battered by a lifetime of hard labour – 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.”

It’s the second time Matthew has played the role. He was in the production’s first run, at Park Theatre, in August 2014.

The show will tour eight venues in the UK before heading to New York in April.

Matthew said: “I’ve never played New York, so it’s absolutely thrilling to be going there with Toast.

“Off Broadway is especially exciting because the venue we’re going to – 59E59 – is hugely respected and well known in Britain but you don’t have the huge pressure of the commercialisation of Broadway like you do with the bigger venues in New York.

“We can relax, do our job and enjoy ourselves without worrying about that side of the business.”

Tickets, from £15, are available from the box office on 01865 305305 or at oxfordplayhouse.com.