You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next) at Edinburgh Fringe 2026 ★★★★★

★★★★★ You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next) | Summerhall

Keron Day is a magnetic stage presence in this beautiful (and laugh-out-loud funny) exploration of care & co-dependence.

Keron (co-writer along with Alex Howarth and Helen Chong) is disabled, with a back-catalogue of Personal Assistants who have variously not cared enough, or cared too much about themselves, or were so OVER caring. He entertains his new PA Dani (Lauren Foster, brilliant) with tales of her predecessors – through a hilarious montage of character performed by Martha Walker – as the two strike up a relationship which blurs the lines between friendship and caregiving.

Dani has her own problems at home though, and Keron decides that the best way to keep her from leaving is to re-shape himself to her. So it’s off to a football match (for which Keron has to do extensive pre-game wikipedia research), where Dani is called upon to intervene in a shocking moment of ableist abuse which leaves Keron understandably shaken.

You and Me… is excellent at taking a perhaps straightforward set-up and turning things upside down. Keron begins to wonder if he is at least partly at fault for the series of lapsed carer relationships. Dani contends with a coercive partner, and becomes reliant on alcohol. The title of the show hints at the likelihood that this seemingly well-matched pair may not make it through together, whatever your traditional expectations of a sixty minute narrative arc that ought to send you back out in to the world feeling reassured. Ought it?

Anyone who has ever paid attention to – indeed, cared about – the lived experience of disabled people will know that there are no simple solutions. The fairytale ending – ‘and they all lived happily ever after ‘- is in much need of a shoulder-shake. That’s not to say, of course, that disabled people don’t deserve, and get, uplifting life stories. But it’s important to acknowledge the real struggle, and diminishes disabled lives to think that everything can be made good with a few jokes and a stiff upper lip.

Keron’s story eschews all the potential pitfalls – how could it not? This is his life, through his eyes. There are no easy answers, and perhaps Keron will always have to endure the cycle of introductions and goodbyes. Perhaps his care can only ever by cyclical, (re-)beginning over and over and over. But Keron seems determined to find the beauty in that.

There’s a moment about half way through that really defines the importance of work like this, as Keron takes a break from the narrative to tell his origin story. It’s a powerful, awful, anger-inducing call to action – as is, essentially, the whole play. Care is such a simple word, four letters which can go missing as easily as they can be written down. A life can be completely, irreversibly altered through the lack of those four letters. Keron is here to show us – with humour, compassion, bravery and sheer bravado – just how essential it is that we all give as many fucks as we can spare.

Stuart Wilson

I am Joint Editor at To Do List. I like: nice pubs, film marathons, not doing real marathons, bad comedy, plays/musicals with shorter second halves, and the Oxford comma.

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