Tom at the Farm

AIDS revealed the common outrage that gay men can die and have life partners without their family ever knowing about them.  In Tom at the Farm, Michel Marc Bouchard transforms this into a gothic thriller, about a grieving young man visiting his dead lover’s family farm in the creepy Canadian countryside.

Tom is a warm, sometimes effete, fashion copywriter from Quebec, whose lover was killed in a car accident.  Yet we see Tom’s lover clearly as Zoran Jevtic expertly rises to the big challenge of narrating this tale while also enacting it - and surviving Tom’s horrific journey. Bouchard’s poetic detail is also seductive, without holding up the narrative.

Tom begins with the best intentions to affirm gay realities at the funeral but, arriving at the farm, he’s soon bulldozed by the unknowing widow (Di Adams) to be introduced only as her son’s “co-worker”. Instead, she’s obsessed about why the (very fictional) girlfriend hasn’t turned up.

Meanwhile, the homophobic Francis (Rory O’Keefe) harbours guilty secrets concerning his brother, and his threatening physicality and – to Tom – his growing, almost masochistic allure are very well played between the two.   As this weird transition builds, Hanna Raven belatedly arrives from the big smoke as some version of a girlfriend. Murder follows when bloody truths are revealed.

It’s an impressive ensemble staging of what is a verbose but compelling thriller, here artfully directed by Danny Ball for Fixed Foot Productions.  He maintains good suspense across Kate Beere’s small stage set of packing boxes, dramatically lit by Alice Stafford and Kate Baldwin.  Chrysoulla Markoulli’s haunting sounds help keep us on the edge.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Becky Matthews