Presenting the tongue-in-cheek identity of a self-absorbed urban smartie, Cat Cohen is a lively American comedian-actor-writer who currently boasts 166K followers on Instagram and 104K followers on TikTok. Her fans apparently were packing a recent preview of Broad Strokes, Cohen’s new solo show that bowed Monday at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, because at times the laughter seemed to be anticipating her remarks, indicating familiarity with Cohen’s comical persona, if not her material.
An overblown American Beauty rose of an artiste, Cohen delivers her Broad Strokes in a quick mix of conversational humor and music. Much of the show is rendered by Cohen as upbeat songs written along with David Dabbon, the music director and keyboard player of a snazzy musical trio performing on one side of the stage. These airy, cabaret-style numbers comment upon the startling autobiographical story she relates: A few years ago, about to depart Manhattan to perform at the Edinburgh Festival, Cohen unexpectedly suffered a stroke at the untimely age of thirty.
“I know life is crazy. Just random blood and guts,” warbles Cohen in a husky semi-soprano. “But God I must have done something. To deserve this stroke of unluck.”
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Grabbing an Uber for the emergency room, Cohen undergoes treatment and tests that reveal her thankfully minor stroke was caused by a congenital condition called Patent Formen Ovale (PFO) – “a hole in my heart,” she explains. The realization makes Cohen, a proud, lifelong hypochondriac, feel oddly vindicated. Cohen amusingly notes this condition probably explains a voracious hunger to fill that void at her core with material things, and how it accounts for other dubious behavioral issues she exploits for comedy. Cohen’s eye-rolling experiences with pubic shaving, a cardiac surgeon named Dr. Love and the bawdy details of a ticklish procedure she endured while awake somehow trigger plenty of laughs.
To stage Broad Strokes, Alex Timbers, the inventive Tony Award-winning director of Moulin Rouge! The Musical and Peter and the Starcatcher, among numerous other major league events, capitalizes on Cohen’s characteristically self-dramatizing manner to present the comedian in mock-Gothic romance environs. Top of the line designers Derek McLane (scenic), Kelsey Randall (costume), Jake DeGroot (lights) and Cody Spencer (sound) showcase the raven-tressed lady grandly clad in puffy, grape-colored satin furbelows amid lurid blue, purple and green surroundings suggesting Game of Thrones more than The Pitt. A curious visual decision, perhaps, but Cohen’s humorous matters of life or death certainly deserve some other-worldly grandeur,
Broad Strokes opened July 27, 2026, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through September 25. Tickets and information: www.catcohenbroadstrokes.com
