Review: Catherine Cohen

Catherine Cohen's cabaret is as funny as her comedic routines, while her routines retain the energy of her cabaret. There's a unity in her sequinned onstage persona, Manhattan attitude and point of view that makes The Twist... more than the sum of its parts. You remember the show more as a joyous night out, rather than simply a joyous Fringe hour with great individual tunes or punchlines. When she sings that she wants our attention, her naturally unfaltering glamour and verve ensures that she gets it – and for the full hour. 

A regular at New York's Club Cumming, her first Edinburgh run arguably fits in with the musical comedy tradition Alan Cumming made his own here in the '80s as part of the duo Victor and Barry. Though more contemporary minds will draw parallels with Netflix's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the 'voice of a generation' given by Lena Dunham in Girls.

She explores the psyche of a woman flitting between the extremes of elated overconfidence and the insecurities of wanting Instagram likes. But it's the human desire to be liked in a more age-old and aching sense—the need for approval—that makes her insight on modern life such 'relatable content'.