Section:GDN 12 PaGe:11 Edition Date:190821 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 20/8/2019 15:27 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian
Wednesday 21 August 2019 11
‘I want everything!’
Caught between self-love and neurosis, Catherine
Cohen is a quintessential millennial. Brian Logan
talks to a comic with her sights set on the movies
PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHN ROBERTSON/THE GUARDIAN; GRAEME ROBERTSON/THEGUARDIAN; DAN KITWOOD/GETTY
Vernon Williams created Genesis,
now one of Notting Hill’s most
long-standing bands, in 1980 , and
the Williams family has become
a venerable carnival institution:
a dynasty of fl oats and foam, all
set to the pounding of soca drums.
“I was lucky that my husband was a
fellow Trinidadian, so we could show
them what carnival was all about ,”
says Allyson. “I am so proud that my
children took to it and embraced it.”
Vernon died in 2002 , and carnival
was diffi cult that year. “ I cried all the
time,” says Allyson. To complicate
matters, Vernon had arranged for
Genesis to perform as part of the
Queen’s golden jubilee celebrations.
“It was all arranged,” Allyson recalls.
“They called us to ask, are you doing
this? He died two weeks before the
jubilee. Everyone said, ‘ Let’s do itas a tribute to him.’” The band wore
T-shirts with Vernon’s face on them,
and paraded down the Mall. I put
it to Allyson that the story of her
relationship with Vernon is also the
story of Notting Hill Carnival. “It
was lovely ,” she says. “I remember
everything about him with such
fondness , including the carnival.”
After his death , their daughter
Symone Williams-Nelson took
over as band leader, with Allyson
heavily involved in coordinating and
producing the costumes.
Allyson hopes to inspire a new
breed of mas costume designers
to reconnect with carnival’s rich
history. But the historic traditions
of mas are being replaced with
so-called pretty mas, which is more
popular today and has extravagantly
beautiful costumes – bright colours,
sequins, and beading – but they don’t
represent characters or themes. “A lot
of bands in recent years have gone
for feathers and bikinis and beads,”
Allyson says with a sigh. “They felt
that the interpretation of historical
themes was probably a bit heavy. But
I’m all feathered out at the moment.”
As pretty mas comes to dominate,
mas camps are counted out. “That
has died,” says Simon-Hartman,
who is a freelance costume designer.
“There’s not many bands left that
have mas camps you can visit .”
Unless there’s a sudden about-turn,
mas camps may be a thing of the past.
Browne warns: “The old performers
are dying. Mas as performance
culture is under threat of erasure.”
For now, Allyson and Simon-
Hartman will keep the spirit and
traditions of carnival where they
belong : on the road. Simon-Hartman
doesn’t take this privilege for
granted. After she was diagnosed
with rheumatoid arthritis in 2001,
she feared she’d never design
costumes again. But in 2015 she
found a medication that allowed her
to return to work – which she did with
a fl ourish, making 40 costumes for
Elimu that year. After other bands
saw her handiwork , the orders
started coming in.
Being able to keep doing what
Simon-Hartman loves best – making
phantasmagorical costumes that
horrify and entrance in equal
measure – is a privilege. “To me,
mas means culture, heritage,
street theatre,” she says. “ It’s the
opportunity to express yourself.
It represents freedom.”
Notting Hill carnival runs from
Saturday until Monday in London.PHOTOGRAPH: MURDO MACLEOD/THE GUARDIANAuthenticity
... members
of carnival
band Genesis
with London
mayor Boris
Johnson in 2011maybe I won’t give birth to a chubby daughter
I’ll have to fi ght with in the changing room .”
Watch the show, and it feels like a satire on –
or exposé of – self-projection millennial-style,
in which “I’m wonderful” and “I’m vulnerable”
jostle for stage space. Older audiences – to
whom Cohen never usually plays – can fi nd it
overpowering, she reports. “A man stopped
me and told me I was talking way too fast and
he couldn’t understand what I was saying.
I was like, ‘Thank you for the note, sir!’” Back
in the day, performers (and everyone else ) kept
their dysfunction concealed, or at least buried
deep in the subtext. “Whereas I’m like , ‘What’s
subtext?’ ” Cohen says with a laugh. “‘Here’s
text. Here’s some more text’.”
She tells me what fellow US comic Naomi
Ekperigin told her: “‘You’re pure id.’ And I was
like, omigod, that’s it. That’s what I’ve been
doing. It’s this pure, “I want, I want” character,
and I’ve just been leaning into it and hoping it’s
not off putting.” And where does that character
come from? “It’s what I’m actually thinking,”
she replies, as if it were obvious. “I want
everything, I want everyone to pay attention
to me. I really am addicted to my phone, and to
male attention. It’s my base desires, I guess.”
She hopes audiences might identify with
the persona on such lurid display. “Hopefully,
in sharing some of my selfi sh or disgusting
secrets, people might be like, ‘I feel that way
too, and feel less alone.’ That’s what I look for- a performer exposing themselves on stage
and letting me see my insecurities refl ected in
them.” But mainly, she wants to make people
laugh. And she needs to be on stage. “ I turn to
Henry before the show every night and I’m just
like, ‘ This gives my life purpose’.”
But for how long? Cohen is so clearly a
star in the making that I fear we may lose
her to the movies or to TV (for which – after
appearances in Broad City and Search Party –
she’s developing a version of her stage show).
“I want to be a movie star,” she says, fl ashing
the kind of smile that defi es you to bet against
it. Then there’s musical theatre, with which
she has teenage history and an ambivalent
relationship (“I’d say it’s life-ruining”), but
to which her skills – like erstwhile Edinburgh
fringe sensation Tim Minchin before her – are
perfectly suited. “I want to do it all!” she insists - like her mentor Cumming, a fi ne template of a
self-authored creative career.
But fi rst there’s a festival to fi nish – if she can
muster the strength. “People do this multiple
years in a row? They have a death wish!” she
says. “This place is crazy. But it’s heaven. ”
Catherine Cohen is at Pleasance Courtyard,
Edinburgh , until 25 August.
‘T
he other day I woke up,
I was like, ‘ This is the
most magical place on
Earth!’” The New York
cabaret and comedy
performer Catherine
Cohen is rhapsodising about her maiden
Edinburgh experience. “This was me: ‘I’m in
the exact right place!’ I was gonna cry.” But the
rhapsodies don’t last long. “Last night I was
sobbing, I was like, ‘ Why would anyone do this
to themselves?!’ After this, nothing else will
ever be as hard.”
That’s a spot-on precis of the fringe
rollercoaster, and it gives a vivid fl avour of
Cohen’s show The Twist...? She’s Gorgeous,
which may be the most eye-catching comedy
hour on the fringe. Houston native Cohen,
27 – who performs a weekly cabaret at
Alan Cumming ’s club in Manhattan – is the
millennial paradox made fl esh, and set to
music. She is a dazzling, ravening ego on legs:
her signature song is
called Look at Me and
repeats the phrase ad
absurdum. Her act is a
dance of death between
self-love and neurosis,
sequinned and staged
because, hey, make your
downward spiral sexy
enough and you might get
enough likes to spin back up again.
We meet in the Pleasance’s backstage
bar mid-festival and – notwithstanding her
dramatic emotional arc – she could hardly seem
happier. This is a woman who has the world
where she wants it, and who laughs blithely
throughout our chat – even when discussing the
terrifying anxieties she nightly splays across the
stage. Alongside Look at Me, her songs include
one about murderous revenge on a handsy
date, another on her attraction to men who’re
indiff erent to her, as well as her ditty, Take My
Money , about shopping for plus-size clothes.
This isn’t traditional musical comedy. “It’s
repetitive, it’s usually one joke. Henry
[Koperski, her composer and pianist] always
kids that I refuse to rhyme or to write a joke. But
it makes me laugh, so I just go with it.” Koperski
exaggerates: Cohen has plenty of jokes (“I love
sex because it famously has no consequences”),
her mannerisms are hilariously arch and she
can make her voice funny as well as beautiful.
But he’s right that her lyrical schemes are
capacious : Cohen often careens off -piste.
Witness the riff in Take My Money on the fact
that she’s always been larger than her
boyfriends: “Like, if I fuck this skinny guyI’m addicted to
male attention.
I guess it’s my
base desires
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