(le) Pain – Cultivated

Part cookery show, part existential meditation Jean Daniel Broussé’s show on the meaning of bread is certainly a unique one.

But I’m not sure it always rises to the occasion – and believe me when I say that bad wordplay is entirely fitting for this show, whose title is itself a pun and contains one literally shit joke (“kneading a poo”), and others that may qualify, depending on your sense of humour.

Mixing footage of his parents and their family boulangerie with story-telling, live breadmaking, acrobatics, and a prolonged stretch of lying on the floor naked, Broussé explains his youth. We hear how we grew up in the family business, and how he was torn between being a baker and a performer.

This, apparently, was a lot like Jesus, who we are told was torn between carpentry and being the messiah – a parallel delivered with tongue firmly in cheek, and seemingly only for the punchline that “man cannot live on bread alone”.

And that tendency to go out for a joke is possibly what undermines the show. There are interesting vignettes – some laugh out loud moments, some genuinely poignant – but they hang only loosely together and there is little sense of a driving narrative.

The show concludes with a wholesome gesture as Broussé invites the audience to share the baguettes he baked during the show. Of itself it is a lovely moment – but it feels like another sketch, rather than part of a coherent whole.