Catherine Cohen’s ‘Come for Me’ Is Sexy, Absurdist, and All Grown Up

While Come With Me (which Cohen is currently performing at the Edinburgh Fringe) is spiritually similar to Cohen's Netflix special, it's funnier and more explicit, which feels like a product of maturity—however absurd that sounds when talking about a show full of dick jokes.

By Nora Biette-Timmons | August 6, 2024 | 11:27am

Photo: Courtesy of Entertainment

Catherine Cohen’s ‘Come for Me’ Is Sexy, Absurdist, and All Grown Up

Comedy can be so context-specific that an international tour may sound, in theory, like an ill-advised prospect—especially one that includes a stop in Germany, a country not exactly known for its joie de vivre. But when I saw Cat Cohen, the New York-based comedian and actor, perform her new standup special Come for Me in Berlin a few weeks ago, she was, as they say these days, unburdened by the context. If anything, performing in a foreign place seemed to heighten her talent; this woman was born to entertain, I thought throughout the show, and she’s going to do it anywhere that’ll have her.

And the places that will have her have gotten more and more impressive over the past five years, since I first saw her perform her unique blend of musical comedy and standup at Union Hall in Brooklyn. (If her medium sounds too theater kid for you, I promise it isn’t; there’s nothing earnest about Cohen’s stage persona.) She dropped a Netflix special (The Twist?… She’s Gorgeous) in 2022, had a delightful guest appearance in Girls 5Eva, released a book of poetry (called God, I Feel Modern Tonight), and, whenever she’s in New York, hosts a weekly comedy cabaret at Club Cumming. On August 1, she kicked off four weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she’ll be performing Come for Me every night (except Wednesdays). “I’ve been doing stuff [in the UK] for a while,” she told me backstage before her Berlin show. “I feel very at home there.”

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The humor in Come for Me is, more often than not, borne out of the tension between Cohen’s (or, at least, the exaggerated version of her that’s onstage) fervent belief that she’s the hottest woman in the world and the severe body dysmorphia that anyone with boobs or an ass who grew up reading celebrity magazines in the 2000s is familiar with. These jokes are occasionally punctuated by despairing, funny-because-they’re-true political references (you know we love an abortion joke here at Jezebel) or absurdist existential musings, but the show is overwhelmingly just silly and sexy, poking fun at bodies, intimacy, and desire—but never being dismissive or (forgive me for using such a trite phrase) kink-shaming.

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If you’ve seen her Netflix special, you know that Cohen draws heavily from her own life. Come For Me feels spiritually similar to The Twist?…—although she’s in a longterm relationship now, so the jokes about seeking male attention are focused on one particular man, thank you very much. She’s also funnier and more explicit, which feels like a product of maturity and growth, however absurd that may sound while talking about a raunchy show that has no shortage of literal dick jokes. (One of my favorite parts of the set is punctuated by Cohen partially recreating a selfie she and her boyfriend took while high on shrooms and sent to their families, in which she’s fully clothed, he’s stark naked, and she’s proudly holding his flaccid penis.)

“I take my time making sure a show is perfect. Once I’m proud of it, I want it to go all over the world,” she told me. And over the last 12 months, Cohen’s taken Come For Me across Europe and America, with a few stops in Australia and New Zealand along the way. The Guardian gave it four stars and called it “a hilarious social-mediated psyche set loose.” When she gets back to the U.S. in September, she’ll begin working on a new show, but for now, Cohen’s giving Come for Me its last major hurrah at the Fringe.

The show has built-in moments for crowd participation, and the combination of Cohen’s raunchiness and this particular audience in Berlin—a city where sex positivity takes on religious fervor for certain demographics—had a tremendous payoff. After asking how long one enthusiastic couple in the front row had been dating (eight years), she asked what their secret was. Their thoroughly unsurprising answer (“We’re non-monogamous!”) prompted a verbal eyeroll. And when Cohen asked the audience whether anyone had ever filmed themselves having sex, what sounded like a full half of the room responded affirmatively—what she said was “the most enthusiastic response I’ve ever gotten in any city.” Maybe she says this to every audience, though I doubt it. You’ll have to see her at the Fringe and let me know.