Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Stand-up comedy, musical theater, and cabaret collide in PEPPER SLIT LIVE IN HER LIVING ROOM and BROAD STROKES

• By drediman
• August 3, 2026
• No Comments

This summer seems ripe for a certain type of musical entertainment. More specifically, a number of writers/performers have been thinking outside the box, creating immersive and intimate musical entertainments that break the fourth wall — sometimes quite literally — colliding stand-up comedy, musical theater, and cabaret. Here, I’ll be delving into two such shows, Chloe Troast’s Pepper Slit Live in Her Living Room and Cat Cohen’s Broad Strokes (in my previous posting about the current plethora of new Off-Broadway musicals, I provided my thoughts on Saturday Night Live’s Jane Wickline and comedian Liva Pierce’s similarly coded Dukes).

BROAD STROKES
Lucille Lortel Theatre
Through September 25

In her solo confessional show Broad Strokes (RECOMMENDED), comedian Cat Cohen has taken a harrowing episode of her life — namely suffering through a stroke at the mere age of thirty — and turned it into an hour of all out musical comedy. By juxtaposing this scary chapter of her life with her unabashed quest for fortune and fame, Cohen’s show highlights the absurdities of contemporary life. This is further emphasized by the bubbly nature of the songs by Cohen and David Dabbon — most of them pure pop nuggets — which jarringly contradict the seriousness of her tale. Donned in a voluptuous outfit that seems like it was ripped from one of the queens in the musical Six, Cohen puts on an entitled white girl act that falls decided somewhere between caustic and laissez-faire, appealing equally to the gays as much as to the millennial generation at large. She’s also a solid singer, competently leveraging the inherent cheekiness of musical comedy to serve her storytelling needs. At the end of the day, however, I wish that her narrative boasted a more robust dramatic arc, as well as a more impactful punch line (no spoilers here). The passages of self reflection seem almost half baked, but that may be part of the schtick she’s attempting to convey. As it currently stands, the show simmers when it should be swinging punches. Broad Strokes has been elaborately staged by highly sought after stage director Alex Timbers (Broadway’s Moulin Rouge!, Here Lies Love), even featuring a live onstage band to accompany Cohen’s ditties. The show is set within a gothic manor, which has been designed by Derek McLane with what seems like a hefty budget. In fact, the production’s elaborate bells and whistles seem almost like distractions from a show with actually very little uniquely insightful to say. Nevertheless, the show is never less than amusingly diverting. And at just over an hour, Broad Strokes thankfully doesn’t drag itself out. If anything, the material seems destined to be picked up by a streaming service.

PEPPER SLIT LIVE IN HER LIVING ROOM
The East Village Basement
Through August 15

Also opening this week at the East Village Basement is Pepper Slit Live in Her Living Room (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). Pepper Slit is the inspired brainchild of Saturday Night Live alum Chloe Troast, who has created a persona of an intentionally ridiculous fading entertainment star — a hybrid between Fanny Brice and Bette Midler — who won’t go down without a fight. As the show begins, the situation doesn’t look good for Pepper. Indeed, we soon find out that she’s about to be evicted from her longtime New York apartment. When three movers (played with infectious glee by the trio of Sam Blumenfeld, Gus Laughlin, and Josh Nasser) arrive to pack up her possessions, she charms them with her insistence, eventually winning them over by regaling them with outrageous tales from her (supposedly) storied life and career via a series of deftly-crafted satiric musical numbers. She also ultimately wins over her apartment building’s bullying landlord — played with delicious attitude by big-voiced Jamie Linn Watson — a tough cookie who invariably gets her way, or so it initially seems. As you can imagine from the venue’s name, the East Village Basement is an exceedingly intimate performance space, which director and co-writer Sam Blumenfeld utilizes brilliantly. The immersive production essentially unspools in a Pepper’s living room, putting audience members just mere inches from the lively performances (we’re practically on Pepper’s lap throughout). Troast plays Pepper with the cartoonish wide-eyed wonder of Bette Boop, staying firmly in character even when she breaks the fourth wall to improvise with the audience, ending more often than not in exuberant mayhem. She also sings winningly with an effortless Broadway-style belt. The buoyant musical accompaniment is provided by Charlie O’Connor, who is ensconced in the middle of the living room with his keyboard. O’Connor also serves as a sort of sidekick and moral support for Pepper over the course of the evening’s proceedings. In summary, Pepper Slit Live in Her Living Room is both an homage to and a melding of musical theater and sketch comedy. In its current iteration, the show is already a fully-formed piece of musical comedy; it’s a giddy experience that deserves more life.