‘Broad Strokes’ review: A scary stroke at 30 becomes a hilarious off-Broadway show

At first mention, a young person suffering a stroke does not scream “comedy gold mine.”

A sleepless night of doom scrolling, perhaps. A bombardment of nervous texts to a doctor friend, maybe.              

But, as I remembered while at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street, where the Broadway money printer “Oh, Mary!” premiered two years ago, neither did first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. And we all know how that turned out.

Pair the right performer with the perfect story and laughs can involuntarily come bursting forth about the unlikeliest of topics.

And so they do during the curious case of Catherine Cohen, the fabulous, life-of-any-party comedian whose hilarious new downtown solo show “Broad Strokes” that opened Monday is about the surrealness of a 30-year-old enduring a medical emergency most commonly afflicting people four decades her senior.

Like any millennial, all Cohen ever wanted was for her special qualities to earn her attention. They did — and how.  

That rare stroke, she tells us, was the result of an undetected hole in her heart from birth. 

Right then, it becomes abundantly clear why Cohen’s delightful off-Broadway debut is also pretty much a musical. 

Hearts in song can be achy breaky, get totally eclipsed and have games played with them. Surely an actual hole in one is worthy of a tune, too.

And so, with her collaborator David Dabbon, Cohen has written seven — about gay hospital workers that aren’t gay enough (“we’re gonna need a gayer nurse!”), her obsessive need to please everybody (“Are You Mad At Me?”) and her unwitting status as a “vindicated hypochondriac.”

Every New Yorker’s private anthem is already Cohen’s sing-a-long finale: “La la la la la la — live in fear!”

Their score is really catchy, varies in genre and is, quite frankly, better than it needs to be. The smart numbers are far from one-punchline wonders, but express her desires and ample neuroses as her fabulous life is at risk of falling apart.

One called “Complete Control” brought to mind Donna Summer or Peaches and Herb. Another, “I Don’t Claim This Energy,” has an ‘80s vibe of Irene Cara. The most impressive song, “Normal Girl,” begins like early diary-entry Taylor Swift and then shifts into something of a “Rose’s Turn” breakdown by the end. 

Cohen, who’s now 35, had her stroke while otherwise riding high. She hosts a very funny, stream-of-consciousness podcast with Pat Regan called “Seek Treatment,” and successfully tours her act around the world. “Broad Strokes,” in a different form, began at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

Just before she was about to jet to Europe in 2021, Cohen noticed something was wrong when she tried to pick up the remote control during the reality show “Selling Sunset.” Her arm wouldn’t move.

“OK, Chrishell. I’ll keep watching,” Cohen dryly jokes.

With wit, a truly inventive vocabulary and unexpected targets of humor (I’ll never forget the phrase “an adult blonde”), she then guides us through the madness of those confusing weeks.

Her restless show is driven by a major contradiction. Cohen craves to be the main character of her own life — to a point. In the opening song, “By The Sea,” she longs to be a literary heroine who lives grandly by the water. A Mrs. de Winter in “Rebecca,” say, or Edna in “The Awakening.”

“Broad Strokes” takes that atmosphere of scandal in the mist to the next level with designer Derek McLane’s set, a combination of a candle-covered gothic castle and a high-school sleepover. Think “Tales From The Crypt,” only cute.

Of course, if you know those old books, tales of women by the sea — heck, all the way to “Beaches” — usually turn out not to be the sort anybody wants to be on the cover of. They don’t tend to end very nicely. In this story, Cohen gets more than she bargained for. 

She’s alive, thankfully and obviously.

And, making lemonade out of stroke, she’s used the comic absurdity of that scary experience to craft a show that exemplifies the millennial curse: Dreaming of being the obsessed-over lead in a juicy drama, but desperate to avoid any and all draaama. 

Yet “Broad Strokes” is not like one of those memoirs that a morning talk show might proclaim “explains a generation!” Cohen is too singular for, well, that broad a stroke, even if she’s ace at point out the ridiculousness of certain universal ordeals.

“Because of this modern hellscape we live in, the MRI results are texted directly to my phone,” went one that the audience responded to like they were at a taping of “Oprah.” 

A strong choice was to bring on director Alex Timbers, who, when he’s not directing “Moulin Rouge!” and “Just in Time,” moonlights on smaller-scale comedies such as “Oh, Hello!” and “The Pee-wee Herman Show.” 

He has a knack for humor, and his skills collide here. The musical numbers, backed by a great band, are staged with finesse and take advantage of every centimeter of the Lortel space instead of cementing Cohen down front. And the jokes are non-stop and meticulously detailed.

Together, they’ve made a tight, sleek and personable evening. I think it’s fair to say that this director and performer are mutually and beneficially idiosyncratic. 

Early on, Cohen recalls being mortified when an acting teacher once described her as “just a normal girl.” For her, there is no worse classification imaginable. 

Consider “Broad Strokes” Cohen’s long-sought revenge. Because walking out of her proudly strange and uncompromisingly individual show, the last word on anybody’s mind is “normal.”