When Adam Lenson was diagnosed with cancer in 2019; it caused all past, present and future versions of him to collide in the oncology department. Billed as part-memoir, part-gig, part-lecture, this affecting piece zaps backwards and forwards through Adam’s life, contrasting childhood hopes, teenaged ambitions, and adult realities with sensitivity and skill.
An endearing and amusing storyteller
The stage is a low-tech mess; neon tubes and low-slung wires leading to a variety of screens which complement the narrative. These in part suggest the medical career Adam abandoned in favour of the theatre, the almost compulsory backstage cable tangles, and the internal knots and neural alarms being triggered within himself.
Lenson is an endearing and amusing storyteller; and there is particular resonance here for anyone with a Jewish heritage, misspent teenaged youth drinking orange WKD, or a cancer diagnosis to navigate. But the central message is universal, and something we have all wondered… what if we had taken this path and not that? What if we had said this and not that? And most haunting of all; how many versions of us are there out there having a better time than we are?
Despite its difficult subject matter, this is a cosy little show which will make you chuckle and ponder in equal measure: and you are likely to leave the theatre suspecting that if you had to choose between the troubles of everyone in the world, you would still probably pick yours.
