Ben Target: LORENZO
Ed Fringe 2023
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Ed Fringe 2023 -
Top tip, don’t buy a coffee just before this show. Walking in, flat white in hand, the immediately affable and multi-award-winning Ben Target (sometimes pronounced Targét) is handing out small cups to audience members in need of a caffeine injection. Just in this small act, Target encapsulates the core of the show: caring. Caring for his audience, and encouraging us to care for each other, as we coordinate coffee deliveries to the people on the back row. Now, in this small room, we are a community and what follows is seventy minutes of captivating, world-class storytelling.
The eponymous Lorenzo Wong is Target’s uncle, a man hailing from Hong Kong who was adopted into Target’s Chelsea-residing family after he moved to the United Kingdom. The story centres around Target’s role as Lorenzo’s care-giver when the latter is in his eighth decade, a stroke survivor, and a shitter of the bed. Target’s grandparent’s, and Mr. Wong were architects, and at the back of the stage is a beautiful carpentry table, from which we see a stunningly crafted array of props and tools that help Target tell his story.
I’ve never seen a Ben Target show before, but I have seen many shows (all brilliant) directed by the late Adam Brace, who sadly passed away mid-way through working on LORENZO. Ben pays tribute to Brace in the way I think he’d have appreciated, calling him unprofessional for dying but admiring his commitment to the research on a show about death, whilst also blaming any parts of the show we don’t like on the recently deceased - he would have laughed as hard as we did.
I don’t want to say too much about the plot, it is by turns belly-laugh funny and devastatingly sad. I recently lost my Grandfather who, like Lorenzo, had a wonderful sense of humour; there were two moments when I could have truly wept, but by that point in the show there was some perfectly placed toilet roll to dry my eyes on.
‘The universal is in the specific’, I can’t remember where I read that but for storytellers they are words to live by - here, target weaves together a tale about his relationship with his Uncle, he recounts their memories, their histories, their passions in tender detail and I would defy anyone with blood in their veins not to find a connection to their own lives.
There’s a reason this show is sold out until the last week of fringe, it is properly magical. You must beg, steal, or trade a kidney for a ticket.
Ben Target: LORENZO is on at Summerhall: Anatomy Theatre on Aug 7-13, 15-20, 22-27 - tickets available here.
FIVE STARS
Photo by Ed Moore.
