Comedy review: Ben Target: Six Endings in Search of a Beginning, Heroes@TheHive, Edinburgh

This work in progress show is a beautiful, gentle, touching thing that occasionally elicits a giggle, a murmur of laughter, a smile

Ben Target crafts his comedy out of odd scraps of thought and bits of paper

Ben Target: Six Endings in Search of a Beginning, Heroes @The Hive, Edinburgh * * *

Ben Target considers himself to be “an artist who works in the field of comedy” and that seems like as good a description as you will get. The first several minutes are spent with Ben arranging bits of paper on the floor. Which is all a bit Gaulier for me. He talks about his fear of goodbyes, and his Aunt Leslie, who is a significant player. We make paper planes and little figures of Ben and hear about his peripatetic childhood, what home means, stories of his life, loves, and the Chelsea Hotel, and we play the Goodbye Game.

If you would enjoy a charismatic hour full of open-ended thoughts and ideas then you will love this. It waltzes on the outermost fringes of comedy. And it takes its place alongside regret, sadness and death. Even now, ‘in progress’, it is a spellbinding mix. It would be quite a thing to go every day and watch the show cohese.

Until 23 August.

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