Review: (le) Pain

(le) Pain is a genre-hopping performative tour of life and bread. I had no idea the etymology of ‘companion’ had latin roots (com: ‘together with’; panis: ‘bread’)…sprinkle with a little French et viola: ‘to break bread with one another’. Lovely. As is this whole show. 

It starts with some accordion, progresses to bagpipes and ends with a communion. Performer, Jean-Daniel Brousse, prepares bread whereupon we learn that as well as being a 4th generation family baker from rural south France, gluten intolerant, and gay, there were expectations of this only son to continue the family tradition onto a 5th generation. What this queer performance does is extrapolate the baking process using kinaesthesis-as-allegory for the inner tensions he has experienced:

“1kg patriarchy, 750ml Christian values, 70g sentimentality, 20g small-town mindset”.

(le) Pain is a lament on the process of letting go: of hopes, dreams, and expectations;  and in the process finding that these little discontinuities are just the framework to ever greater experiences. 

This moving sermon on the vagaries of life is also extremely funny.

(le) Pain ran at the Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh.