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

One hour and 10 minutes with no intermission.Through Sept.

25 at the Lucille Lortel Theater.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-...