You mellow with age, they are saying. So whither, now she’s 31, the comedy of Catherine Cohen? When Cohen unleashed herself on the 2019 fringe – and afterward Netflix – it was with an emotional car-crash of a musical comedy act, pasting sequins on her neuroses and narcissism and splaying them fabulously throughout the stage. However are these Olympian heights of hysteria and self-absorption nonetheless scalable now?
Sure and no, on the proof of her second present, Come for Me. The Cohen it introduces, with opening quantity The Void, is recognisably the identical self-ironic, self-obsessed monster as earlier than. She performs, and commentates on each element of her efficiency. She self-glamorises, advert absurdum (“Courting me is what critics and followers alike are calling an immersive expertise”). Her sentences teem with put-on voices, hashtags, air quotes and asides.
Perhaps there’s not the shock of the brand new that accompanied her debut. However I really like this act; I may watch all of it day. It’s the social-mediated psyche set free on stage to music – and advantageous music, too, with piano from Frazer Hadfield and lyrical free-associating from Cohen, now sweetly trilling, now beginning to blather, halfway via a horoscope track, in regards to the varied methods one may get pleasure from artisan bread.
However because the set progresses, a barely maturer Cohen emerges. Sure, nervousness about relationships, intercourse, and her physique stays excessive within the combine. And the ego remains to be all-consuming. However there’s reflectiveness, too, and perspective. Two songs, of their differing methods, make peace with, and certainly have fun, her dysfunctions and out-of-control appetites. A ultimate quantity, with its breezy melody and bleak lyrics in playful opposition, finds the New York resident in transit between youth and maturity.
It’s additionally full of snickers, which Cohen by no means forgets to ship. There’s oversharing, recent views, and life-stage materials about freezing her eggs and having a boyfriend who’s additionally – quelle horreur! – an uncle. However there’s additionally ridiculousness in abundance, from a comic book with a way of her personal daftness, that at each pivot, pose and sashay finds hilarious new methods to precise itself. Would you name it mellow? Not precisely. However outrageously sharp and humorous? Completely.
