Review: Fanaticism, Imperialism, and Sexism Flavor "Bread of Life"

Bread of Life

Written by Frank Pagliaro

Directed by Leslie Kincaid Burby

Presented by UP Theater Company at Fort Washington Collegiate Church

729 W 181st St., Manhattan, NYC

March 26-April 12, 2025

Nikaury Rodriguez (Herut) and Miguel Reis (Simon). Photo by Edward Lopez.

Loaves and fishes, those comestible stars of one of the stories of the Biblical New Testament, also function in Frank Pagliaro's new play, Bread of Life, as apt shorthand for the gendered situations of husband and wife. Herut (Nikaury Rodriguez) spends a lot of time making bread, that domestic staple, her hand-grinding of the flour becoming almost an aural motif on its own while the stone grinder's circular movement suggests the same sort of repetitiveness that marks her days as a wife and mother. Her husband, Simon's (Miguel K. Reis), trade as a fisherman takes him daily beyond the confines of the home and into the company of others (and, often, on his way home, into the company of alcohol). It is therefore unsurprising that the couple's son, Ezra (Jesse Castellanos), coming up on his thirteenth birthday, wants to learn his father's trade rather than take the more static, scholarly path that his mother envisions. Simon's trade, however, also ends up being the conduit for an encounter that will irremediably alter their family in ways that form the heart of this production's keen, often funny explorations.

Jesse Castellanos (Ezra) and Nikaury Rodriguez (Herut). Photo by Edward Lopez.

A woman who has sacrificed dreams for family, a laboring man who mitigates discontent with drink, and a restless son on the cusp of adolescence: this might describe many a contemporary family. But Bread of Life's clan inhabits Bethsaida in the year 30 CE, a land under the occupation of the Roman Empire and burdened, especially for low-income families like the play's protagonists, by its taxation. Occupation is a word that Herut tries to insulate Ezra from, not wanting him to endanger himself by espousing revolutionary ideology or mixing with political agitators. Then as now, though, it's difficult to keep children in that sort of protective bubble, and Ezra's father brings just this sort of revolutionary–and religious–talk home after meeting a carpenter-turned-preacher named Joshua (Cameron Mark Russell). Worse, Simon subsequently disappears, leaving his family members to fend for themselves and putting his wife in violation of the law. It is not until Herut's mother, Elisheva (Laura Fois), has an acute health crisis that Simon, now going by Peter, returns home, this time with the mysterious Joshua in tow. And this reunion is far from marking the end of upheavals for the family.

Miguel Reis (Simon), Cameron Mark Russell (Joshua), Nikaury Rodriguez (Herut), Jesse Castellanos (Ezra), and Laura Fois (Elisheva; on ground). Photo by Edward Lopez.

To an extent, Joshua could be any charismatic (religious) leader–similarities in the ways in which his message attracts men, especially young men, looking for purpose and resentful of limited opportunity might be traced in various examples today. That Joshua may not be a charlatan complicates these echoes somewhat, although aside from characters disagreeing about that possibility, there occur a few moments ambiguous enough that a spectator could see them as open to interpretation if so desired. The fracturing of the family as an effect of Simon/Peter's devotion to Joshua also prompts us to think about masculinity itself, from the note of hypocrisy in the former's closing words about the family to the question of what place would have been available to Herut anyway had she agreed to go along with her husband before he left without her.

Laura Fois (Elisheva). Photo by Edward Lopez.

The production creates a very authentic family dynamic, including through the play's language, which, as the program notes, mixes ancient and modern, Yiddish, Hebrew, and "American working class" rhythms and vocabulary, achieving simultaneously a strong sense of historical place and an equally strong sense of relatability and immediacy. Rodriguez and Castellanos play laudably off one another as mother and son, each frustrated with the other for their own reasons, each with a deep love for the other that they express at sometimes unexpected moments. Russell lends an authoritative calm to Joshua, and Reis deftly balances the admirable and less admirable aspects of his character as Simon becomes Peter and we wonder if his dedication and sobriety are sufficient gains for the loss of focus on his wife and son–something of an opposite arc to Fois's Elisheva, who initially seems overly critical and unsympathetic towards her daughter but gradually gains the courage to reveal a more genuine self. The beautiful scenic and lighting design from Scott Aronow and Shane Hennessy, respectively, produces a dramatic impression of the landscape in which the family's humble home stands as well as of the passage of time. There is a wonderfully staged moment when we see inside that home–suggested by a wooden door frame and a semi-transparent hanging, lit from within–and this image of gazing through the walls at an interior where a ritual both expresses gratitude and recalls a "burden of bitterness" encapsulates the workings of this compelling production as a whole.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards