More About Yesterday's Bread

Set in 1980s Newark, Yesterday’s Bread follows Lina, a tough-as-nails neighborhood matriarch whose secret life - beautiful turn-of-the-century home - suddenly land in the crosshairs of a local thug. Over the course of one spring day, Lina, her live-in nephew, and the whirl of characters who invade her kitchen are pulled into a high-stakes scheme to protect her legacy.

Comic sparks fly with Milly, her lifelong confidante, while a pot of borscht, poison, Jean Naté, and the return of Bocce - a charming, old-school mobster with lingering affections - push the day toward chaos.

At its heart, Yesterday’s Bread is a sharp, human comedy about secrets, regrets, and the fierce loyalties that hold a family - and a community - together.

Lina

Sharp-tongued, resourceful, and deeply tied to family tradition. Her home and kitchen are her kingdom, but behind her steely exterior is a woman worn down by time and quietly longing for salvation.

· Val 

Raised by his aunt and stumbling through reckless relationships, he is desperate to prove he’s grown. He lives upstairs with a steady new girlfriend, but his old guilt - and what he imagines his aunt thinks - keeps sabotaging him. 

· Brooklyn

Val’s girlfriend. An ambitious young chef, she is passionate, driven, and hopeful. She seeks authenticity and connection but finds herself caught in Lina’s unspoken expectations and cryptic world.

· Milly

Lina’s eccentric best friend, with a childlike disposition. She’s sweet, loyal, and often hilariously off-track, yet serves as a strange but grounding force in Lina’s life.

· Rain

A sharp, streetwise prostitute trying to escape the life. She is smarter than she looks and more resilient than most. She sees through pretenses.

· Gora

A local Russian mobster. Menacing, entitled, and predatory. 

Bocce

A well-known New York mobster with softer edges than his reputation suggests. He’s an old-school operator - charming, protective, and woven into Lina’s past.

  Yesterday’s Bread is a sharp, tightly woven character driven story – accessible, darkly funny, and thematically rich. Its single-location setting makes it ideal for production while its bold roles, especially for older women offer strong casting appeal. It promises not only critical depth and fresh theatrical voice, but audience engagement and emotional impact - a “bread and butter” vehicle for standout performances and successful runs in regional, off-Broadway, and beyond. By fusing the intimacy of a kitchen drama with the danger of a thriller, Yesterday’s Bread invites audiences into a world where tradition is both a blessing and a burden, and where the past still rises, like dough, into the present.