When your performance space is small and hot, it takes a couple of smart cookies to put nice, thick-card flyers on every seat and invite the audience to use them as fans. The only discomfort in this room was caused by Catherine’s opening gambit about what we ladies call our… y’know… but as quickly as she disarmed the men in the room, she pulled them back in with razor sharp gags about coming out to your Catholic parents, their small-town friends and acquaintances and, most importantly, your manicurist.
You’re in safe (and beautifully turned out) hands here. Catherine Bohart is clearly on the cusp of great things (she’s in the finals of both the 2016 Funny Women Awards and the BBC New Comedian of the Year 2016) and they’ll provide excellent short snapshots of the 25 minute set here, but I can’t encourage you enough to see the whole thing.
It’s not just their red hair that unites these two performers. Cally Beaton bounds onto the stage for the second half and there’s no let-up in the laughter. She finds utter joy in being a single parent of teenagers, who sound as though they got their smarts from the maternal side. There’s an awful lot to be learned as the mother of someone with Aspergers – mostly about apes and porpoises. And looking for other fish in the sea.
As I left the venue, it was a delight to overhear a mother asking her son ‘which one did you like the best?’ to which he replied ‘don’t make me choose… all right, the ginger one, then.’
★★★★
Cat Call is at Just the Tonic at The Community Project until 28th August, for tickets click here!
