Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Tom at the Farm, Lydia Bennet Works in Finance, and more

THEATRE

Tom at the Farm ★★★★☆

Pleasance at EICC (Venue 150b) until 24 August

It’s unusual to see theatre on the Fringe at the scale of Tom at the Farm, the 2011 play by Canadian writer Michel Marc Bouchard, now in this multi-award-winning Brazilian production. At EICC, on a stage bigger than several Fringe theatres put together, this epic story of brutality and homophobia in the countryside is charged with fierce energy.

Leading Brazilian actor Armando Babaioff translated the play into Portuguese (it is performed here with English sur-titles) in light of the fact that Brazil has the highest number of LGBTQ+ murders in the world. He plays Tom, an urbane advertising executive, who travels into the remote hinterland for his lover Paul’s funeral.

Armando Babaioff and Iano Salomão in Tom at the Farm | Contributed

However, when he arrives at the family farm, he discovers that Paul’s mother Agatha (Denise Del Vecchio) had no idea he was gay. Paul had invented a girlfriend, Hellen, for her benefit. His older brother Francis, however (played with menace and barely suppressed rage by Iano Salomão) does know, and will do anything to protect his mother’s ignorance.

Instead of escaping back to the city, Tom stays on the farm, drawn into a twisted bond of danger, grief, repulsion and desire with Francis. It takes the arrival of a second visitor from the city (Camila Nhary) to push events toward their conclusion.

In Rodrigo Portella’s production, designed by Aurora dos Campos and beautifully lit by Tomás Ribas, the huge stage is smeared with mud and dotted with buckets of water, all of which are put to good use. Physicality is constantly foregrounded, from the birth of a calf to the ditch where dead animals are left to rot.

Tom at the Farm is brutal, poetic and compelling. It is twice the length of most Fringe shows but the tension barely falters. You don’t dare look away.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

THEATRE

Lydia Bennet Works in Finance ★★★☆☆

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

Jane Austen meets Absolutely Fabulous in this Pride and Prejudice spin-off comedy written and performed by Trelawny Kean. Lydia Bennet, the youngest and perhaps most annoying of the five Bennet sisters has walked out on the philandering Wickham “for good, this time”. She’s on the street with her designer luggage and nothing approaching a plan.

Her pouting falls on deaf ears with the rest of her family. Austen fans will enjoy the glimpses we get of them: Jane and Bingley have two kids called Balthazar and Bunny; Mary is a cross-fit instructor. Finally, Lizzie and Darcy agree to take her in, if she promises to get herself a job, hence her resolve to “enter the workplace like Melanie Griffith”.

Kean evokes Lydia with energy and panache, and the fact that the character is absolutely recognisable from the novel, albeit relocated to the 21st century and given a pair of Jimmy Choos, is an indication of the strength of the foundations. The big question is less whether Lydia will make it in the world or work, but whether she’ll manage to grow up along the way.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

THEATRE

Muller’s Tales of Wonder ★★★☆☆

Assembly Rooms (Venue 20) until 23 August

Dutch writer and performer Tim Honnef is a regular at the Fringe with his own Borgesian blend of storytelling theatre which plays with the notions of fiction and truth. This year he gets even more meta: he has made a series of shows which have been moderately successful at best, he wants to quit, but has not yet managed to make the play he really wants to make. This one.

Tim had a friend called Mia who wrote stories and entrusted a bunch of them to him, making him promise to make a show. So Mia’s gently surreal stories (if she existed) are interwoven with the story of making the show and of Tim and Mia’s friendship.

Honnef’s style is anti-theatrical – he sits at a desk and reads from a script because an illness (described in an earlier show) has affected his ability to learn lines – but his deadpan delivery and dry wit is part of the charm. How much of it is “true” we’ll never know, but there is a heartfelt subtext here about seizing the day, enjoying the journey and savouring the moment before a story begins.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

THEATRE

I Now Pronounce You Lost and Found ★★★☆☆

Greenside @ George St Venue 236, run ended

Reema Chadha’s lost-and-found story begins growing up in a Gujarati household in North-west London with parents whose chief goal is to “prove they made it in the country that took them in”. Surrounded by stories of her parents’ love match and elopement, she dreams of being the perfect Indian wife.

When she falls for “bad boy” Danny, her family pulls out all the stops for a seven-day-long Bollywood-style wedding. But it doesn’t take long, post-marriage, for the harsh realities of her husband’s drinking and gambling habits to emerge.

Chadha is a lively, engaging performer, capturing perfectly the voices and attitudes of her Indian parents. She also proves to be an excellent Bollywood-style dancer. The twists and turns of her story become less clear in the final quarter of the show, when the complexities of real-life threaten to overwhelm, and she shares fewer specifics with the audience.

But, mostly, she draws us along with her on an exuberant journey of self-discovery, understanding more about the forces that shaped you and learning how to say yes to your own potential.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

THEATRE

Mr Creep ★★☆☆☆

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth (Venue 156) until 24 August

It’s hard to fault the ambition and weird aesthetic of Theodora van der Beek’s intense ‘office creep’ character Martin, whom she invented for a pretend office party with her flatmates during lockdown. The execution, however, is variable, from the amusingly obscure (Martin eating a scotch egg with the same attempted weird allure as Faye Dunaway’s 1979 Japanese advert where she eats a hard-boiled egg) to being desperate to shock (eating a jug of liquidised ham, leerily faking masturbation at the finale). Her intentions become clearer when she refers to this as a piece of “cursed theatre”, like the “cursed” images which circulate on the internet, but it still feels like it’s being workshopped before us.

DAVID POLLOCK

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THEATRE

The Domestiques ★★☆☆☆

C ARTS | C Venues | C Alto (Venue 40) until 24 August

Misfit Toys Collective take a stab at Jean Genet’s The Maids in The Domestiques, a choose-your-own adventure style performance that emphasises themes of political and social rebellion in the original. To begin, the audience chooses which of the two maids, Claire and Solange, will play the mistress, Madame, while the other plays her servant. The set (aka Madame’s bedroom) is highly detailed, as is the script (the line “Blue Lives Matter” is a particular highlight), but the audience are granted no further input in the actions of the characters, or the outcome of the plot, which proves a missed opportunity.

JOSEPHINE BALFOUR-OATTS

THEATRE

Little Circus ★★☆☆☆

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Greek Gyros Grill (Venue 605) until 24 August

Elise Harris expresses regret at calling her one-woman storytelling and poetry piece Little Circus, leading audiences to believe it’s a children’s show, rather than tales of disappointment in a life of performing from a “born show-off”. This includes the rude family who trudged in late with a noisy toddler, ate their picnic, checked their phones and walked out early when I was there. The venue, twice renamed since Harris’s booking was made, is also a contender for the Fringe’s worst, with no noise separation to the busy café upstairs and people trudging through to the store cupboard and toilets downstairs. Yet still her trust in the material appeared low, as she succumbed to the distractions and tried unsuccessfully to re-edit the performance as she went.

DAVID POLLOCK

READ MORE: The Best Edinburgh Fringe Theatre 2025: Every show with a four or five star review from The Scotsman so far