By The Newsroom

Published 15th Aug 2023, 10:51 BST

Ben Target: Lorenzo ****

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 27 August

The issue of care for the elderly, who does it and at what cost, is one of the most pressing of our age, and erstwhile stand-up comic Ben Target tackles it in microcosm in this bittersweet one-man show. Target moves in with octogenarian Lorenzo after he suffers a stroke and charts his journey as a full-time carer with frankness and humour.

Lorenzo Wong, an architect and emigre from hong Kong, was befriended by Target’s architect grandparents and came to live in the basement of the family home. When things were tough upstairs, Target went to spend time with Lorenzo, always ready with a homespun invention or a practical joke. A beautifully designed carpentry table makes up most of the set, opening up and folding out to reveal various models and devices.

At first, they rekindle their old camaraderie, but Lorenzo is fading. Target is picking him up when he falls, clearing up the mess when he soils himself. At the sharp end of caring, there is little respite and no dignity. Both feel the other doesn’t respect them; neither wants to be there.

Target occasionally stands in his own light – we could have done without the digression on how is name is pronounced, for example. Nevertheless, this is a moving and courageous piece of theatre. Poignantly, it was directed by Adam Brace, who died suddenly in April while the show was being made.

Target has a long-term interest in care, particularly palliative and elderly care, but he doesn’t have an axe to grind here. In this personal story he has found a way to confront the messiness of ageing and dying, lightening the load with humour and by creating a portrait of the extraordinary man that was Lorenzo Wong. Susan Mansfield

Not Our Crime, Still Our Sentence ***

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 17 August

Under the Rug Theatre is a new Scottish company dedicated to exploring issues that society at large prefers to sweep under the carpet. This new play by Glasgow writer Mikael Philippos fulfils that remit to perfection, as it tackles the story of Dawn, the wife of a man serving a long prison sentence, and the relentless economic and emotional pressures she faces.

Dawn’s two children are her top priority, vulnerable to predictable name-calling and bullying at school. She also faces the disapproval of her mother and best friend, who struggle to understand why she stands by her husband; and is herself forced to risk occasional petty crime, in an effort to balance the household books on a mix of benefits and low earnings.

The show crams a huge range of issues into a brief hour of theatre, and tries to incorporate surreal dream sequences – reflecting on society’s harsh judgments of women in Dawn’s position – that often seem pretty ill-judged themselves. Yet Rohanne Woods delivers a pitch-perfect central performance as Dawn, humorous, harassed, quietly heroic; and together with Leon Murray as her thoughtful teenage son Jake, she gives the play a powerful emotional centre that holds the show together even in its more embarrassing moments, and ensures that its plea for better treatment for prisoners’ families makes itself heard, in a vital act of compassion and solidarity. Joyce McMillan

Sofar ***

Paradise in Augustines (Venue 152) until 19 August

In Sofar, star academic Alma Klein (played by Lucy Whelan) leads a sensitive research project, tracking the injured humpback whale, Luna, on her voyage home to Hawaii. Sadie Graham (Martha Edwards), a recent graduate, acts as assistant to Alma on this months-long mission.

Written by Rosa Gatley and directed by Maisie Holland, the contrasting temperaments of the two characters provides opportunities for comedy and conflict, and the stage design creates a real sense of the sea. In one standout scene, the pair struggle against a storm, and the crashing of thunder clashes with flashes of lightning.

The character of Alma is informed by Holland’s lived experience of Friedreich’s Ataxia (a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder), and Gatley examines the language of illness thoughtfully – particularly, the relationship between illness and metaphor. When Alma announces her early retirement from field work, her prognosis is alluded to, but her diagnosis is never explicated.

Scenes are short, akin to stanzas. This is perhaps in homage to Coleridge’s 1798 narrative poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is briefly referenced. Though the animal at the heart of this piece is a very different beast, Sofar can be said to enjoy a similar structure and style. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Cola Boy **

theSpace @ Symposium Hall (Venue 43) until 19 August

It’s the mid-90s, and Jimmy (Ross Bailey), a young club promoter from Aberdeen, grieves the loss of his best friend Andy (Alexander Butler) by moving to Dubai with dreams of launching his own mega-rave, shacking up with air hostess Alison (Poppy Abbott) and getting involved with drug dealer Omar (Sunjay Midda). I enjoyed writer-director Sarah Michelle Durrant’s use of liberally-sprayed perfume to create an ambience, and Ryan Battles, the writer of the source novel, making a meta personal appearance. Yet the show is essentially a live advert for the book, leaving the rather cliched 1990s choons‘n’dealers set-up unresolved, while the Scottish accents – the talented Molly Jayne Graham aside – are unrealistic. David Pollock

Alexander Klaus, the One-Legged Shoemaker Man ***

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Burrito ‘n’ Shake (Venue 605) until 19 August

Actor Christian Hege deserves extra credit for navigating the space he’s been given at this year’s Fringe, the unseparated basement room of a South Bridge restaurant which suffers noise bleed from the busy street outside. That he still manages to create a captivating evocation of time and place with his one-person performance illustrates both his compelling quality as an actor and that of the story he’s telling.

Hege is the Alexander Klaus of the title, an elderly man with a large grey beard and a pronounced limp. He’s here to tell us the story of his life; of how he came to New York City at the age of 16 in 1863, his leg already lost in the American Civil War. As he settles on the Lower East Side with his wife and child and begins making shoes, Hege’s evocation of the city at that time is strikingly realised.

His 19th century New York is a place of slum tenements, overcrowding which is made many times worse by returning soldiers after the war, and lack of access to nature or green space. Amid all this, Klaus’s PTSD is only made worse, and his life crumbles because of it. Yet – as his name is intended to suggest – his small acts of kindness allow him to rediscover something of himself. David Pollock

The Flea **

Hill Street Theatre (Venue 41) until 20 August

An eponym for the metaphysical poem by Donne, The Flea sees one woman tied to a bed, as she waits for her partner to finish their sex game. Written and performed by Alice Gill-Carey, The Flea tackles subjects of domestic abuse and coercive control. However, the narrative frame becomes estranged from the protagonist’s immediate internal world, as she frequently slips from her bonds to deliver long, winding monologues. Gill-Carey might consider reframing this piece as non-verbal performance art or an installation, so that the audience can infer the story of this woman from the nuanced visual imagery it provides. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Hickory *

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 19 August

Although this play is set inside a cuckoo clock staffed by mice it is not a children’s show. It is not exactly suitable for adults either as it takes an unpromising premise for a sketch and over-inflates it. Co-writers Ryan De-La-Haye and Elijah Eardley play two mice whose sole purpose is to keep the clock running. As performers, they deal competently with their own dialogue but it’s curious that at no point when working on this examination of repetitive pointless labour they didn’t decide that their time would be better spent writing something else. Rory Ford

Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatre reviews: Ben Target: Lorenzo | Not Our Crime, Still Our Sentence | Sofar | Cola Boy | Alexander Klaus, the One-Legged Shoemaker | The Flea | Hickory