There was a brilliant absurdity at the heart of Catherine Cohen’s 2019 Edinburgh Fringe breakthrough ‘The Twist..? She’s Gorgeous’, wherein the singing US comic’s OTT diva-isms were corralled into a small (albeit mostly-sold out) room: there was a delicious air of deluded megalomania to the fact this unknown was tackling a tiny sweat box like she was Madonna at the Super Bowl.
The Pleasance Forth is not quite the Super Bowl. But it is a much bigger room and for me the biggest difference between Cohen then and Cohen now was that the spaces are beginning to match pace with her character’s ego - there’s definitely a sort of plausibly ‘An Evening With…’ type vibe going on here as she sings songs, shares anecdotes and raconteurs away like a sort of distracted millennial Barbra Streisand singing horny cabaret songs.
To what extent the ‘real’ Cohen and the stage Cohen overlap is probably something we don’t particularly need to know, though the stories she tells us – about freezing eggs, going on a road trip, being freaked out her boyfriend is an uncle – presumably all at least have a core of truth. But in essence the concept of Cohen’s shows to date is her persona - there is no great point to make or story to tell other than that Cohen slays, is fabulous etc and has turned doing so into something like a martial art. Her audience patter is sublime, expressing genuine curiosity then savagely cutting people down the second they get even slightly cocky. The songs are fun, especially the semi-self-lacerating opener ‘The Void’, and shape the production to some extent.
But really ‘Come for Me’ is Catherine Cohen doing what she did before, but in a bigger room - and to be honest that absolutely works as a USP. I just hope she gets to do arenas next time.