You mellow with age, they say. So whither, now she’s 31, the comedy of Catherine Cohen? When Cohen unleashed herself on the 2019 fringe – and later on Netflix – it was with an emotional car-crash of a musical comedy act, pasting sequins on her neuroses and narcissism and splaying them fabulously across the stage. But are those Olympian heights of anxiety and self-absorption still scalable now?
Yes and no, on the evidence of her second show, Come for Me. The Cohen it introduces, with opening number The Void, is recognisably the same self-ironic, self-obsessed monster as before. She performs, and commentates on every detail of her performance. She self-glamorises, ad absurdum (“Dating me is what critics and fans alike are calling an immersive experience”). Her sentences teem with put-on voices, hashtags, air quotes and asides.
