Kurt Cobain did not die a poetic death, says Cassie Workman. The idolised musician’s suicide in 1994 fed into the myth of the 27 club, the sad litany of rock stars from Hendrix to Winehouse who have died at that age, but there is no glamour to be found there.
Rather, Workman finds a sense of sorrow, not only for an artist whose music she adored but also for a fellow outsider. She is not alone in that. Cobain had a special appeal to the young and disaffected in an age of cynicism. They saw in him a kindred spirit, a sensitive soul who could rise above the everyday with a hard-won romanticism. Workman describes seeing one of them paying their respects in Memorial Park in Aberdeen, Washington state. Neither speaks because each already understands what the other is thinking.
His death might not have been poetic, but that does not stop Workman, side-lining from her standup career, giving it the full spoken-word treatment. Her hour-long show is a sad and sorry voyage around Cobain’s stomping ground, spoken in soft, resonant tones, all unobtrusive rhymes and iambic rhythms that break off only once for a spot of pastiche Gilbert and Sullivan.
Her Aberdeen is not a pretty place. Even the rain seems dirty in this unlovely industrial town. But as Workman imagines herself journeying with him around this and other formative haunts on a fantasy mission to rescue the depressive star from himself, she finds a dark beauty in his life and loss. And what grunge fan would have it any other way?
At Just the Tonic Nucleus, Edinburgh, until 28 August.
