On March 11, 2020, I went to see Dave's Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer 2019, New York-based Catherine Cohen, at Bush Hall in West London – the first night of a sell-out run – and filed a review for the Evening Standard which you can read here. The review starts by saying that Cohen leaves you wanting more. She certainly did. The next day I received an email saying that the run had been postponed. Due to the possibilty of flights to America stopping Cohen had taken the difficult decision to return to New York. A week later it was shutdown UK.
Cohen has spent the last year putting her regular club Cabernet Cabaret online, recording her podcast Seek Treatment and has published a book of poetry, God I Feel Modern Tonight: Poems from a Gal about Town. Hopefully she will return to the UK soon. In the meantime here's an interview I did with Cohen for the Evening Standard that also ran here in the run-up to her London shows in March 2020.
Find out more about Catherine Cohen here.
This attention-seeking American was the definitive word-of-mouth hit, going from unknown to Edinburgh Comedy Award best newcomer winner. Now the buzz has come south. Cohen announced two gigs at Bush Hall in March and without a whiff of advance publicity until this exclusive interview, a third date has already been added.
So what makes Cohen so special? She is not the first entertainer to mix mirth with melody, but few have been this candid about millennial life and sex. Her self-deprecating calling-card line is: “Boys never wanted to kiss me, so now I do comedy.” Her style is scatty and compelling and her gigs a wild ride. The infectious songs are written with accompanist Henry Koperski, while the patter between them is often a stream of consciousness. Welcome to the oversharing world of Catherine Cohen.
“That’s my imagination, but it is inspired by events.” The lyrics elaborate on the reason for the killing: “because you touched my lower back at a party four years ago”.
Cohen, 28, cites Cher as an inspiration, which explains the sequins and sparkling costumes. She has a powerhouse singing voice, but in conversation she is more of a freestyle cocktail of Carrie Bradshaw and Lena Dunham. She recently started writing an advice column for W magazine and has a weekly sex and dating podcast, Seek Treatment.
“That’s when I get into trouble. It’s usually me frantically calling the producers the next morning and being like, ‘Wait, can you cut that thing I said about that guy from the bar, because he knows my cousin and she listens to the podcast?’ But I never want to hurt anyone or make anyone feel stupid, it’s mostly joking about myself.”
So when she started performing Cohen went in the other direction, being positive, full-on and frank. Her break came when she and Koperski landed a residency at Alan Cumming’s intimate hangout, Club Cumming. Their standing-room only Cabernet Cabaret nights allowed Cohen to hone her improvisational style: “Alan is the most generous man. They just trusted me with that basically. I feel like I became a pro at dealing with whatever the crowd was throwing at me by having that slot.”
Edinburgh 2019, however, was the ultimate rite of passage, doing a nightly show for nearly a month.
“I did 28 and I almost lost my mind, it was insane. It was the most challenging and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I was floating through the festival. Some days I wouldn’t stress about it and some days I was like ‘I cannot do this today,’ but you learn how to get through it. By the end I was like, ‘I can do anything’.”
Onstage she is a social-media account made flesh, constantly unpacking her emotional baggage and wisecracking about modern masculinity: “Sometimes the only way to know if a man is straight is if he Instagrams a building.” She finds it easy to be open. “I can’t keep anything to myself. It’s therapeutic to talk onstage. To be able to connect with an audience, it’s like, yeah, it’s a drug.”
Anyone who buys a ticket will certainly see the true Catherine Cohen.
“I can only write something if I’m really feeling it. One time, I was trying to write a song about a breakup, but I hadn’t gone through a breakup recently and I was like, this doesn’t feel genuine. You know what I mean?”
Offstage she finds it easy to wind down, maybe because the transition from public to private is minimal. Being an exhibitionist is her natural state. “Once I was dating this guy and I just finished a show and I was lying on my couch eating a bagel off my chest and he was like, ‘Wow, when you relax you really relax’.”
She is not the first woman to be outspoken, but she does it with a modern mix of absolute self-confidence and lacerating candour. “Yeah, totally. I always joke that my friend’s mom one time was like, ‘Catherine, she’s so confident’, in a way that implied maybe I shouldn’t be. And I always think that’s so funny. I think I was raised by very loving parents and they gave me the strength to love myself even though the world can make you feel like shit.”
Currently Cohen feels on top of that world. She is soon to appear in movie The Lovebirds, starring The Big Sick’s Kumail Nanjiani, and has an eye on a film career. But the shine of winning Best Newcomer in Edinburgh has still not worn off.
“It truly felt so amazing. Every night I just worked my ass off and to have that at the end, it was like, “f*** yeah, I did it.” Whether she will return to the Fringe this year is another matter.
“To do it two years in a row you must have a death wish. But life is awesome right now. I just might.”
