“You can tell I’m from Massachusetts because I look like every cop’s daughter,” says Maggie Crane as she starts her set, painting a vivid image of growing up in the rural woods outside of Boston in an Irish-Catholic family. This introduction follows a slideshow of rapid-fire images of Crane throughout her tween years, sporting fingerless gloves and a faraway Myspace stare, all set to the anxious sounds of early aughts pop-punk. Following a summer stint abroad, showcasing “Side-by-Side” to appreciative write-ups at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Maggie Crane, a self-described “double Aquarius and lapsed Catholic” who landed in Bushwick, is now bringing her hour-long tragicomic stand-up set back to the States. Hosted by the Brooklyn Comedy Collective at Eris in East Williamsburg, the club exuded a dark and hip atmosphere and was fully sold out for the night, packed with limited standing room.
Joined only by a cardboard cut-out of Panic at the Disco! frontman Brendon Urie and a 12-pack of White Claws, Crane exudes spunk and charm, immediately drawing the audience in with tales of being an annoying little sister trying to command the spotlight away from her older brother.
This classic trope takes a poignant turn, however, when it’s revealed that Crane’s brother is blind and has mobility issues, necessitating the use of a wheelchair and then dies at the age of 14. The attendees are still warmly encouraged to stay on her side and embrace her amusingly competitive sibling antics, highlighted by humorous anecdotes including a lighthearted incident of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” where Crane felt slighted by her brother’s absence of a blindfold.
Following this, the crowd was treated to a compelling blend of stand-up and a genuine exploration into what it means to love and lose someone with a disability. Crane emphasizes that everyone’s life feels normal in their own eyes, and her family’s reality was not particularly outlandish in her own pre-teen memory. She punctuates this with stories of a Boston children’s hospital that felt like Disneyland and family “vacations” that involved smuggling prescription drugs across the border. Reactions oscillate between bouts of entertained laughter and moments of respectful quiet, each carefully attuned to the emotional weight of Crane’s more moving moments. In addition to these family tales, Crane thoughtfully employs her life-sized Brendon Urie to illustrate how teenage girls can find solace in their obsessive crushes and how hyperfixations guide them through life’s challenges.
‘Side by Side’ was put on by the Brooklyn Comedy Collective on Jan. 18. See more programming by the group here.
Photos taken by Andrew Karpan.
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