Cat Cohen’s new stage work, Broad Strokes, brings her singular comic and musical persona to the Lucille Lortel in a one-woman show shaped by a serious health crisis. The production is informed by the stroke she experienced at age 30 and the heart surgery that followed, giving the material a much heavier real-life backdrop than the playful title first suggests.
The show appears to work in the space between performance fantasy and personal vulnerability. Cohen’s onstage identity has long played with glamour, self-awareness, and exaggerated self-importance, and Broad Strokes uses that same "main-character energy" while questioning what it means to actually live through life-altering drama.
The setting, described as candlestick-heavy and goth-leaning, suggests a theatrical frame that matches Cohen’s taste for heightened mood and stylized confession. Rather than presenting her medical experience in a purely solemn way, the show seems to filter it through her existing strengths as a comedian, singer, and performer, turning a frightening chapter into crafted stage material.
That contrast is what makes Broad Strokes stand out. At the Lucille Lortel, Cohen is not simply telling an illness story; she is shaping a performance about attention, identity, and how real suffering complicates the desire to be the star of your own narrative.
