Sometimes a comedian engages you right at the start. Pulls you into their world and doesn’t release you until they are done. This is the case with this superb American comedian. A woman obsessed from her teenage days with Panic At The Disco’s front man, this isn’t a story about the teenage obsessions or crushes that we all have, it’s about how that worked in her world and why, with a profoundly disabled brother, she needed that obsession.
What emerges across the hour is a very funny but also a very moving, very human story about making an abnormal upbringing seem normal. She doesn’t try to sugar coat the more uncomfortable aspects of her growing up. Her material about feeling jealous of the attention her brother gets is, presented in this context, actually very relatable, as is not actually realising that you’re living a very unusual young life. To you it all feels normal. Isn’t encountering a clown pulling a live fish out of his pocket in a children’s hospital the sort of thing everyone experiences?
It isn’t unusual for American performers to come over to the Fringe as very professional, fully formed and fantastic. I guess if you’re investing so much money in your future, you owe that to yourself. But, even allowing for that, Maggie was a cut above. A superb performer, she absolutely inhabits the story and projects every aspect of it with a rare gift, allowing us to find the funny but also to find the empathy for her and shed a tear of both joy and sadness for her loss.
Maggie Crane – Side By Side
Underbelly Bristo Square – Sexter
17.45 Aug 10-13, 15-28
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/maggie-crane-side-by-side
