As long as there has been standup, comics have had to decide how to be themselves on stage. But now, a generation has emerged who – thanks to social media – have been performing in public, even while establishing their actual identities, since adolescence. The fallout from that process is spawning much of today’s best comedy, Catherine Cohen’s very much included. Cohen’s maiden set The Twist …? She’s Gorgeous was the standout show of 2019, on which she was all set to capitalise when the global pandemic struck. Now she is back, with a show that should reveal what the self-obsessed comedy of an Insta-addled twentysomething looks like when its creator inches into their 30s.
The answer – spoiler alert! – is that Cohen, now 31, still has “the same bravado and obsession with myself and with glamour at all costs”. Such are the qualities she brought three summers ago from New York City, where she was known for her weekly cabaret slot at Alan Cumming’s Manhattan nightclub, to the Edinburgh fringe – from which she sashayed off with a slam-dunk best newcomer prize. I met her at the time, and in conversation she was playful and highly self-aware, invisible air quotes lingering around her every utterance. Great fun, in other words – if not as much fun as that debut show, The Twist …, a performance with so much star power it left scorch marks.
