SOcially, you know it will be awkward. Tom traveled miles for his girlfriend’s funeral died too young. Deep in the countryside, ágatha, the dying mother, has not heard Tom yet and is unaware of his child’s sexuality. Tom wants to grieve but, out of respect, cannot give a voice to his true emotions – at least because the cruel brother of the deceased Francis, is determined to keep ágatha in flawless ignorance.
Social awkwardness is part of the play of Michel Marc Bouchard, first seen in Montréal in 2011 and eventually adapted for the screen. What Director Rodrigo Portella added to this production of spellbinding for Cena Brasil Internacional is a fierce physical awkwardness.
It is in such a way that the actors are standing isolated from the damaged stage, designed by Aurora Dos Campos in Rusty Browns that seem to expand forever. The numbers were selected with the sad relief of Lightning Ribas’ lightning punishment, lost souls in a collision course. It is in the way that the stage is puddled on the mud fields, clinging to the actors and making their discomfort pale.
And it is in the menace of Francis (Iano Salomão), an unrestructed symbol of macho intolerance. He is deducting the merciless of Urbane Tom, playing with grace and some objection to Armando Babaaff who, as a translator, has moved to the script to Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the country reported with the highest rate of violent death of LGBTQ+ man.
Consistent with the good speed of a Broody, intense production, it makes this farm not only a reactionary reactionary water, but a cultural end. It is a place where any possibility of developing is killed like the sick cows that Francis has thrown into a canal. Playing is not just about the death of a son but also about the death of hope.
Although ágatha (Denise del Vecchio) is not as clueless as Francis does and even though Tom is paralyzed by Stockholm syndrome, this terrible situation will certainly not continue. Arriving from the city, Sara (Camila Nhary) dumps a short light on a destructive culture that eats itself from the inside. It’s as cruel because it’s surprising.
