Review: Maggie Crane: Side by Side

Maggie Crane brings a comedy about tragedy to Edinburgh, offering a different perspective on disability in her Fringe debut. Flipping between stories of her childhood in Massachusetts and her obsession with a pop-punk singer, Side by Side is both thought-provoking and entertaining.

The title of the show sums up Crane’s relationship with her blind, developmentally disabled, non-verbal brother, Aidan. His disability didn’t stop her from being jealous and competitive in the way most siblings are, and for the first 12 years of her life, he was her friend, rival and equal.

Crane is a confident performer, instantly likeable and, above all, sincere. There’s no doubting the love she had for Aidan and the bond they shared, although it’s difficult to get a true sense of what life was like for either of them through brief snippets of reality, dropped in between longer anecdotes and memories of her Panic! At The Disco crush.

Balancing stories of death and disability with humour, Crane aims to describe the highs and lows of her childhood in an enjoyable way. The jokes don’t always land and while she encourages the audience to reflect on how disabled people are seen by people who aren’t, it’s perhaps too cursory to pack a punch. But she succeeds in letting the world know that her brother, like many disabled people, lived a full life, in an honest, heartfelt and uplifting hour.