Three summers ago, comedian Cat Cohen was packing for a trip to Europe when she realized her left arm wasn’t moving. She took an Uber to the hospital, where she learned that she had suffered a small stroke caused by a hole in her heart. As a self-professed hypochondriac, Cohen was used to her concerns coming to nothing, so when the doctor came back with serious news, she was floored.
Almost immediately, she began documenting the experience in her Notes app. “I was like, I better write this stuff down, because everything that’s happening is so funny,” Cohen says. For one thing, her cardiologist’s name was—wait for it—Dr. Love.
After healing from heart surgery, Cohen took her observations to the stage, trying short stand-up bits about what had happened. But it wasn’t so easy. Her punch lines, she discovered, required quite a lot of setup, and she didn’t want to bum the crowd out. Perhaps what the material needed, she realized, was its own show.
Those jokes and bits, further developed and punctuated with original songs, became Broad Strokes, Cohen’s one-woman show at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, directed by Alex Timbers. A few days before opening night, I meet Cohen backstage in her dressing room. She is doing her vocal warm-ups, dressed in a Tyler McGilligary sweatshirt and a scarf. “It gets arctic in here,” she explains, offering me both a sweater and a blanket.
Behind her is a makeup station, from which Cohen shortly retrieves an eye shadow palette: “Don’t you love it? Purple’s kind of the color of the moment for me.” The custom look that she wears in the show, created for her by Kelsey Randall, is a similar shade; the dress features an iridescent puff-sleeve taffeta body; a corset etched with rhinestones; and a train, with a sparkly spandex bodysuit underneath it all. Randall has been working with Cohen since her 2019 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. What Randall has learned during that time—observing all the singing, dancing, and wild arm movements that constitutes Cohen’s performances—is that “Cat needs to feel comfortable and also snatched and hot,” she explains.
Photo: Matthew Murphy
When Cohen first walks out onstage, she is wide-eyed and holding a candlestick. Before long, she launches into her first song, “By the Sea,” a catchy tune that also helps to explain the Victorian aesthetic of both her costume and the set. (While working with scenic designer Derek McLane, Cohen was variously inspired by Wuthering Heights and images of Gothic palaces and sanatoriums on Pinterest.) “I always wanted to be the main character and the author and the lighthouse,” she tells the audience.
