Everything was going right for cabaret comic Cat Cohen two years ago: Netflix special under her belt, European tour imminent. Then the New Yorker had, in her words, “a stroke at 30: isn’t that so creative?” Diagnosed with a PFO, or (could it be more perfect for her comedy?) a “hole in the heart”, she underwent surgery, cancelling her 2023 fringe run. Now she’s back, with the show telling that sorry tale – although in the 33-year-old’s account, nothing could be further from the “trauma comedy” with which the festival’s arteries sometimes feel clotted.
The dance with sincerity Broad Strokes performs is in fact part of its considerable charm. We know Cohen for her deranged self-consciousness, splaying across the stage, in song and standup, the babbling inner voice of the self-obsessed millennial. How would such a persona process this medical emergency? As an opportunity to advertise their uniqueness, of course! And so Cohen considers her stroke in relation to once being labelled (horror of horrors!) “a normal girl” by a casting director, and as a vindication of a lifetime’s health anxiety. “I wasn’t a hypochondriac,” she trills, “I was a prophet!”
In a beautifully constructed hour, we’re led from Cohen’s experience of suffering her stroke, via flashbacks to her “migraines with a visual aura” in childhood, to her stint in hospital (“honey, we’re gonna need a gayer nurse!”). With Frazer Hadfield on piano, an array of songs (about her need for “complete control”; about the many foibles for which a stroke might be divine punishment) suggest how Cohen is processing this event emotionally.
Not that the spoken parts of Broad Strokes are emotionally guarded. Far from it: Cohen conceals precisely nothing of her attention-seeking inner life, the whole misadventure being rendered in her usual cascade of overshares, sassy asides, and glamorous or goofy voices – none funnier than the sultry femme fatale she becomes when addressing her surgeon Dr Love. Two final songs, meanwhile, both minister to and subvert our expectation that some learning might arise from this odyssey. This is such a rich, perfectly formed show from one of the most can’t-take-your-eyes-off-them acts in comedy.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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