Tom at the Farm at Barbican Theatre

Tom at the Farm is a blood-soaked, homoerotic fever dream where reality and fantasy jump over each other, intermingling with multiple layers of subtext and meaning. Tom at the Farm is a two-hour play with no intervals, which keeps the intensity contained. Like Tom, the audience are trapped, confined to watch the orange-lit stage get wetter with mud, blood and sweat.

Based on the play by Michel Marc Bouchard (which was adapted into the 2015 film Tom à la ferme), Tom at the Farm (Tom na Fazenda) is a rivetingly dark and multi-layered adaptation that has many themes and theories to unpack. Tom (Armando Babaioff), a 35-year-old graphic designer from the city, arrives at a remote Brazilian farm to visit his boyfriend’s family following his partner’s sudden death. His meeting with mother Agathe (Denise Del Vecchio) feels instantly like a surreal cocktail of tension and overfamiliarity. Tom manically jumps between addressing the audience as Ágatha, which, very early on, creates a manic, disjointed feeling, leaving viewers confused about what is real.

It becomes apparent that Ágatha doesn’t know Tom was her son’s boyfriend. Tom stays for the funeral, and at night he is accosted by Francis (Iano Salomão), Tom’s late partner’s aggressive older brother. Francis warns Tom that he will leave him in a pit with sick cows to be eaten by coyotes if he reveals the true nature of his relationship. Tom becomes enmeshed in a violent, angry, surreal Stockholm-syndrome-flavoured relationship with the family, leaving the audience guessing. What is really going on? Where will it lead? And who is going to snap first?

Francis is played in a clever, slippery way, where the audience jumps between loathing him as a homophobic bigot and finding itself warming to him and sympathising with his situation. Iano and Armando’s chemistry is charged with aggression, homoeroticism and a strange kind of romance and transference. Tom at the Farm is an intensely physical performance that takes place on an uneven ground sheet that, as the night goes on, becomes drenched in blood, sweat, and mud, with Iano and Armando following suit as they glisten with various bodily fluids.

Tom at the Farm is a fantastically memorable play which will haunt audiences for days to come. It is at once human and horrific, scary and hilarious, and the unique structure of the run-time means there is no chance to decompress or think about anything else. Like Tom, this farm and this family will consume the audience until they don’t want to leave.

Sophia Moss
Photos: Victor Pollack

Tom at the Farm is at Barbican Theatre from 13^th until 17^th October 2026. For further information or to book, visit the theatre’s website here.

Watch the trailer for Tom at the Farm at Barbican Theatre here: