post by @nataliagresty

5 stars (4 for the show +1 for her unscripted quick wit)

Seen by Natalia at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Aug 8th 2024

Objectively speaking, by which I mean listening to the woman next to me right after the show, it feels impossible not to find the comedian Catherine Cohen hilariously funny. The audience was unanimously bursting into laughter approximately every minute during her hour-long, fast paced stand-up comedy show filled with cabaret-like songs and ironic short poems, Cohen’s signature style.

Come For Me is an exploration of a woman entering her thirties, having some of life’s major questions already answered but many insecurities and anxieties still popping up on the menu. Compared to Cohen’s first Edinburgh Fringe show, The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous, which was later adapted into a Netflix special in 2022, she has mellowed down slightly, but the topics remain the same: boys, s*x, freezing her eggs, mistaking a panic attack for an acid reflux, existential dread and a void that not even standing ovations from sold-out audiences can fill. She laughs at herself too, at the silliness of this insatiable hunger for fame and external approval, but quickly admits her longing is not going to change just because it’s easy to understand on an intellectual level.

Cohen’s range of talents spans from a monthly cabaret show in Alan Cumming’s Club Cumming in NYC, a long-running successful podcast Seek Treatment with her comedic twin separated at birth, the co-host Pat Regan, appearance in movies such as Dating & New York, a poetry book called God I Feel Modern Tonight and a blog My sexy little email. She maintains the same silly persona across all forms of art, but this daftness is an obvious meta-humour, mocking, for example, how naivety in women is often seen as sexy.

Yet as good as her scripted jokes and songs are, such as depicting double standards for men and women: „I saw a guy play this [an electric guitar] once and I said: „What if girl?“ or „I can’t think of any wonderful woman who isn’t easy to hate“, it’s when she’s caught off-guard that her brilliantly sharp wit and quick thinking become front and centre. When a couple sitting in the first row doesn‘t stop talking, she pauses her performance and facetiously asks them which part of the joke they did not get. She then proceeds to explain the joke with her eyes rolling, telling them they can leave if they don’t like the show but then instantly changes her mind and admits she’d be completely devastated if they left. The perfect amount of confidence and insecurity, glamour and anxiety and fame riddled with daily humiliations.

1st-25th of August, 10 pm
Running time: 1 hour

Venue: Pleasance Courtyard: Forth

Tickets and Info: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/catherine-cohen-come-for-me 

Company website: https://www.berksnest.com/edinburgh-fringe

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catccohen/