At two hours and no interval, instead of the usual one hour for an Edinburgh Fringe show, and presented in Portuguese, albeit with English surtitles, I found myself double-checking I wasn’t settling in for something at the Edinburgh International Festival instead. Tom (Armando Babaioff) is from the city, paying a visit to a country farm to attend the funeral of his dead boyfriend, Guillaume. But country life is rather different from city life, and Ágatha (Denise Del Vacchio), Guillaume’s mother, has no idea who he is. He had managed to keep his sexual orientation a secret from his mum – but his older brother Francis (Iano Salomão) knows what is really going on. Francis also knows the potential consequences if Ágatha were ever to find out – in short, it’s a rather backwards and homophobic society.
There’s even a subplot involving Sara (Camila Nhary), roped in to maintain the façade, although like almost every other pack of lies in a play, the truth reveals itself one way or another, and in any event, Ágatha might be getting on a bit, and Francis has reason to believe she may be displaying signs of dementia, or so he says, but she still knows when something isn’t adding up. More than a touch of absurdity crept into the narrative, which leaves Sara, a late entrant into the story, utterly aghast – Tom has rather suddenly engrossed himself in country life and essentially develops Stockholm syndrome. Francis, Tom thinks, is more than a bit like his (Francis’) late brother Guillaume, so feelings of attraction are transferred. And there’s another reason, unspoken, as to why Francis is still at home and hasn’t married and started a family of his own…
In a production where the lines between reality and fantasy became deliberately blurry, I had to think very carefully about what was ‘really’ going on. This is very much a play for the world in which we live, with physical violence used as a direct portrayal of the sort of thing that continues to go on these days, as well as an image of psychological and moral struggles. Hard hitting in more ways than one, this was a thought-provoking and powerful piece of theatre, and achieved with minimal set, aside from tarp, tarp and more tarp, taking over the stage as well as the area below the stage between the edge of it and the front row. The sheer physicality and primal instincts in some of the scenes left me wondering if they ought to have featured commentary from Sir David Attenborough or some other animal biologist.
I’m still in two minds about the idea that city dwellers are progressive and sophisticated while country farm folk are all backwards and insular: the world is surely more complicated than that. But rightly or wrongly, Brazil, where this adaptation of the play has been set, has a reputation for anti-LGBTQ+ violence – and this play, absolutely rightly, has much to say about that. It’s a slow-burner, but one that held my attention from start to finish.
Review by Chris Omaweng
When sophisticated, urbane advertising executive Tom travels to a remote farm to mourn the loss of his lover, he finds himself in a brutal world where grief is masked by denial and truth is dangerous. The dead man’s mother has no idea who Tom is, or that her son was gay. His savage brother knows everything, and will do anything to bury the secret.
In a psychological game of survival, patriarchy and desire collide, in a tense and volatile dance between predator and prey.
Featuring Armando Babaioff, Denise Del Vecchio, Iano Salomão, Camila Nhary
Directed by Rodrigo Portella
Written by Michel Marc Bouchard
Adapted by Armando Babaioff
TOM AT THE FARM
30 July to 24 August
Edinburgh International Conference Centre at the Edinburgh Fringe
