Cursing Fate

“The Other Josh Cohen” at the Paper Mill Playhouse

The Other Josh Cohen at Paper Mill Playhouse; Photo by Billy Bustamante; From left to right: Ken Triwush, Kate Wetherhead, Hannah Elless, David Rossmer, Vadim Feichtner, Steve Rosen, and Cathryn Salamone.

            “The Other Josh Cohen,” a generally flat and listless musical running at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn through March 16, is narrated by its two writers, David Rossmer and Steve Rosen, who play two versions of the title character.  Rosen is the schlubby, mustachioed, present version of luckless slacker Josh Cohen, and Rossmer is the future--taller, more confident, minus fifteen pounds, and, frankly, annoyingly smug about it.  The two communicate, break the fourth wall, and sing less-than-interesting duets, clearly much to their own amusement but not so much the audience’s.

            This fruitless conceit is an interesting and accurate metaphor for the flow of “Josh Cohen,” which seems to have been written with the intrinsic belief that it is a musical indie masterpiece, rather than a brief and unmemorable entertainment.  The real shame is the waste of material on the clearly capable actors.  But for Rossmer and Rosen, the seven-person cast displays impressive talents both musically (those not acting play backup in a five-piece rock band) and dramatically--especially Vadim Feichtner and Hannah Elles, who belong in a much better show than this one.  (Mr. Feichtner is also the evidently able musical director.)  This show is a vanity project for the two Cohens, whose private obsessions don’t make for very good theater.

            “Josh Cohen” isn’t entirely unentertaining.  It’s sporadically funny (Mr. Feichtner as Cohen’s father, leaving an addled answering machine message, is, indeed, hysterical) and one or two of the numbers, including the essentially standalone comic song “Neil Life,” espousing the virtues of a certain Diamond, are passably fun.  But most are boring, and often too loud to understand, and they’re rife with forced rhymes while lacking any kind of cohesive tone, or even a reason to exist.  (“Samuel Cohen’s Family Tree,” for example, is a number that appears about halfway through the show to list, apropos of nothing and in semi-rhythmic klezmer time, some of the title character’s relatives.  These relatives do not come up again.)  None hold any of the lyrical virtuosity or pure stick-in-your-head catchiness demonstrated by a Paper Mill show from earlier this season, “Honeymoon in Vegas.”

            “Vegas” had a better premise, too.  In “The Other Josh Cohen,” a romantically unlucky Lower East Sider, after having all his belongings stolen in a catastrophic B & E, finds a letter in the mail addressed to him and at his address, containing a check for $56,000.  Josh agonizes over whether to cash the check himself or call the woman who seems to have sent it.  Throughout, Josh stomps about angrily and complains that the world is out to get him.  After the ninety-ninth gimmicky non-joke, I felt somewhat the same way.

            It’s certainly not the worst show ever to originate Off-Broadway (the Fringe Festival offers up juicy contenders for that title every August), but it’s not the caliber of show one would expect to see at the Paper Mill, even mid-season.  Though endearing, it’s painful pretty much from start to finish; though well-cast, it has a lot to learn about utilizing actors; and though a fair jumping-off point for beginners, it seems far beneath a pair of actor-composers who’re sixteen years into their stage careers, as Rossmer and Rosen are.
           Give them this, if nothing else--the ending of the show is unapologetically sweet and optimistic about love, which is actually pretty nice.  But sometimes leaving the audience something to remember isn’t just about intention.  The implementation has to be memorable, too.  Alas, like their main character, Rossmer and Rosen have the right idea, but, evidently, rotten luck, not to mention a disappointing lack of creativity.