One of the most eye-catching newcomers at last year’s fringe was the American comic Kate Berlant, brilliantly sending up millennial self-love. Something similar is happening with her compatriot Catherine Cohen, a force-of-nature NYC cabaret star now making a stellar festival debut with her show The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous. Cohen’s personality hits you like a hurricane, as she burlesques the tension between the carefully curated wonderfulness demanded of her tribe, and the rampant anxiety it strives to conceal.
This she does in both song (with Henry Koperski on keys) and motormouthed banter, and the one is as gripping as the other. Back home, she has a weekly slot at Alan Cumming’s cabaret venue, and you can see what might have attracted the waspish Cumming in Cohen’s strychnine-laced song-and-chat about sex, love and self-image. “Boys never wanted to kiss me,” she trills, smile dazzling, “so now I do comedy.” It’s a heck of a revenge: with this show, she’ll win admirers by the bucketload.
The songs are the anchor, and they crackle with attitude – from the one about murdering a too-handsy suitor to another about shopping for plus-size clothes. Scansion and rhyme are secondary: Cohen’s lyrical scheme is never too strict for a self-adoring aside or stream-of-consciousness tirade. It helps that her voice is a terrific musical – and comic – instrument, her words dilating at will into nonsense vocal stylings. A sense of silly is high in the mix.
But Cohen has as much to communicate between songs as in them, some of it scripted, some on the hoof. After a burp: “I’m sorry. I literally can’t stop creating content.” On dating: “Sometimes the only way to know if a man is straight is if he Instagrams a building.” She commentates on her own fabulousness. She’s bittersweet (mainly bitter) about the kind of girl she wishes she could be. She’s crude and confidential, talking masturbation, gynaecology and her longing for indifferent sex.
It’s whip-smart, arch and brittle, as narcissistic pose and neurotic overshare jostle for stage space. Cohen’s act is where consumerism, privilege and social media have led a generation; where millennial and maniacal meet. Her show is alarming – and can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it entertaining, too.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August
