‘I want everyone to pay attention to me!’ Meet Catherine Cohen, comedy’s peak millennial
Caught between self-love and neurosis, Cohen has taken Edinburgh by storm with a musical show that plays up to her generation’s stereotypes. She’s even got a song called Look At Me …
‘The other day I woke up, I was like, ‘This is the most magical place on Earth!’” The New York cabaret and comedy performer Catherine Cohen is rhapsodising about her maiden Edinburgh experience. “This was me: ‘I’m in the exact right place!’ I was gonna cry.” But the rhapsodies don’t last long. “Last night I was sobbing, I was like, ‘Why would anyone do this to themselves?!’ After this, nothing else will ever be as hard.”
That’s a spot-on precis of the fringe rollercoaster, and it gives a vivid flavour of Cohen’s show The Twist… ? She’s Gorgeous, which may be the most eye-catching comedy hour on the fringe. Houston native Cohen, 27 – who performs a weekly cabaret at Alan Cumming’s club in Manhattan – is the millennial paradox made flesh, and set to music. She is a dazzling, ravening ego on legs: her signature song is called Look at Me and repeats the phrase ad absurdum. Her act is a dance of death between self-love and neurosis, sequinned and staged because, hey, make your downward spiral sexy enough and you might get enough likes to spin back up again.