The big surprise isn’t her subject matter. It’s that she sings about having a stroke at age 32.
If Beyoncé or Taylor Swift sang about having “a hole in my heart,” it would be just another lovesick anthem. With Cat Cohen, she literally had a hole in her heart that led to a stroke just as she was about to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023. Her wonderfully performed (and titled) one-person show “Broad Strokes” opened Monday at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
Comics often throw some bit of human tragedy into their acts to show us they have a heart. Since Cohen’s heart was congenitally damaged, she doesn’t go there. Never for a moment does she beg for sympathy, even though the whole premise for the 60-minute “Broad Strokes” is her badly flawed pump.
Actors sing in musicals when the spoken word just won’t do. It’s a little different with Cohen in “Broad Strokes.” She breaks into songs (written by Cohen and David Dabbon) just when things get a bit grizzly, and “A Hole in My Heart” is just one example. It helps, too, that her singing voice always seems to be floating on an overdose of helium.
Whether she sings about having her pubic hair shaved pre-op or inserting a tampon even before she ever had her first period, Cohen brings a sweet, innocuous Shirley Jones sound to lyrics that are often X-rated. That inspired conflict takes the audience through several stages of comic nirvana.
Alex Timbers directs, and like all his other musicals, from “Beetlejuice” to the current Broadway revival of “The Rocky Horror Show,” he brings a hip Gothic touch to “Broad Strokes.” The scenic design by Derek McLane provides what might be the most lavish set ever seen at the tiny Lortel Theatre.
Cohen has devoured way too many bodice-ripper novels, and imagines herself living at the sea in some medieval castle designed by Vincent Price. Of course, her grandly romantic nature hides deep insecurity issues, and Timbers and McLane give her enough extravagant opera curtains and throne-room furniture to launch a few hundred lurid sex fantasies. Kelsey Randall’s costume for Cohen manages to be both retro and leggy.
