Ben Target’s Lorenzo immediately captures the imagination with its curated concoction of carpentry, cleverness, care schedules and chocolate biscuits! Ben delights and enthrals as a storyteller, skilfully animating his words in aptly the most inventive of ways, resulting in a jumble of light-hearted antics amongst intelligent learnings. The humour is sublime.
Personality is at the heart of this show, both from Ben and his absent uncle Lorenzo. This unlikely pairing, united through silliness and invention, have found each other in a world of unkindness. Faced with the tragedy of Lorenzo’s path to death, they do their best to ace it with weekly activity schedules, retaliatory pranks and ginger nuts laced with morphine.
But this tale is punctuated with pain. There is no shying from reality. No amount of frivolity will begin to touch the sides when faced with the helplessness of watching someone you love die. At times Ben stands before you broken. The tears are real. Ben celebrates the elderly as we should and shines a light on the care system as he tries to make things better.
Lorenzo is a real tribute. Filled with joy, adoration, regret and the sadness of how rare it is to find someone who really gets you. That kind of person is unbearably hard to lose. The final scene brings the whole adventure together in such a feel good way that you will feel happy and honoured to have played a part in this exceptional journey of Ben and Uncle Lorenzo.
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 edfestmag.com
photo credit : Ed Moore
Comments