In “Samuel Cohen’s Family Tree,” incidentally, Josh sings the lament, “And they all found love/Except me.”. The idea is a neat one, and gives the peppy musical, which opened on Monday at the Westside Theater in Hell’s Kitchen, a solid foundation. Happily, they have come to Millburn. He is just overweight enough to feel schlumpy, has an unfortunate mustache that might have been sexy in the 1970s, and is a gifted writer in his own mind but an unappreciated temp outside it. But the shagginess pays off once Josh receives a mysterious letter from a woman in Florida who may or may not be a relative. Louis Tucci, when not busy on bass guitar, is both Josh’s landlord and his father. A future version of Cohen (played by Alan Schmuckler) appears, and says Cohen's luck will change within the next year — it's just not clear … With lyrics like “Losing everything is only the beginning,” he lets us know that the tide will soon turn. The idea is a neat one, and gives the peppy musical, which opened on Monday at the Westside Theater in Hell’s Kitchen, a solid foundation. One is beamish: a smooth, guitar-strumming cutup. And yet, in “The Other Josh Cohen,” the two characters — played delightfully by David Rossmer and Steve Rosen, who also wrote the show — are really the same man, just one year apart. Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The new musical The Other Josh Cohen takes a hilarious look at one good Jewish boy with not-so-good luck. Whenever Josh thinks a woman might be coming on to him, he turns out to be wrong, and she makes a point of telling him how ecstatically happy she is with the man in her life, who is clearly superior to Josh. A Neil Diamond CD. As the show opens, it's a few days before Valentine's Day and his apartment has just been robbed. Across 90 minutes and 11 musical numbers, the fates giveth and taketh away, most notably when a large check unexpectedly arrives in the mail. Meanwhile, his attempts at finding a girlfriend are foiled by a variety of flaws, many of which stem from an overt passion for junk food. Year-ago Josh has had nearly everything stolen from his apartment. That effect is of course an illusion here; the authors have been refining their show for years. Like the pints of ice cream that year-ago Josh gobbles down, this confection, er, I mean production, proves impossible to resist. In the song, “Neil Life,” they advise, “Try his point of view/You’ll feel sexy too!” Rossmer, often strumming a six-string while cracking wise, has fine chemistry with the endearing Rosen. We asked the show’s stars about its (Josh does not trust this good luck, although the money does appear to have come from some distant aunt in Florida. How the authors get there is better left in their hands — and those of the five other cast members, who play dozens of characters while doubling as the show’s band and backup. In this cheery revival of The Other Josh Cohen, a work that originated in 2010 at the New York Musical Festival and is now playing the Westside Theatre, I count at least four. Only when adversity helps him understand who he really is can he find his “beshert”: his “meant to be.”. “The Other Josh Cohen” is a charmer, touching on real issues without pummeling them. There is mistaken-identity Josh, a disembodied plot device who we hear over the phone. The biggest laugh on opening night in Millburn went to Josh’s retired father’s answering-machine greeting, surely the world’s longest. The gravel-voiced Mr. Diamond is sketched by Kate Wetherhead, who is terrific in a role listed in the program as A Lot of People. There is only one director, Hunter Foster, though he is otherwise known as a writer and a Tony-nominated actor. Josh’s grab-the-mike-stand number, “The Other Josh Cohen,” is a model of transformation in which Jen Schriever, the lighting designer, recreates rock-concert effects. In tracing the comic pathway by which a schlub becomes more self-assured, it tells a morality tale about the value of persistence. And audiences at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn come to know one of the nicest in “The Other Josh Cohen,” that precious rarity, an original low-budget musical with a life-affirming message and songs worth remembering.