4 stars
When Tom turns up at his dead boyfriend’s family farm, he gets more than he bargained for in Quebecois writer Michel Marc Bouchard’s play, translated by Armando Babaioff for Brazilian company Cena Brasil Internacional’s mud spattered production.
While Tom’s lover’s mother Ágatha knows nothing about her son’s romantic life, his brother Francis is a brute who spars with Tom to create an unmistakable sexual tension. Tom becomes a kind of cuckoo in the nest before all hell breaks loose when a woman turns up claiming to be the dead man’s girlfriend.
While the tone of the psychosexual interplay in Bouchard’s play is decidedly Pinteresque, Rodrigo Portella’s production takes it into more unhinged territory on Aurora dos Campos’s set.
With Babaioff playing Tom, the physical exchanges with Iano Salomao as Francis are delivered with furious intent, while Denise Del Vechio’s Ágatha and Camila Nhary as the woman get caught in the crossfire of a man’s world.
The List, August 2025
Pleasance EICC until 24 Aug, 3.30pm
Ends
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