I’ve known Francesca for a few years—not super well, but as a peer in the “alternative comedy scene” (I tried finding a less annoying term for that, but failed). Her name would come up when talking to friends and collaborators like Ana Fabrega or River Ramirez who kept saying “you HAVE to see Francesca!” When I finally did, I understood the hype. She’s incredibly funny, and, like all of the comedians I love, a completely singular voice. A sort of “miscellaneous” act that is hard to classify, who invites the audience to speak her own language and surrender to her very specific kind of absurdity. 

Comedians like Francesca are little boxes of surprises—each bit being a fun trinket they present to the audience. Francesca’s ability to evoke child-like naivete to cast light on the absurd is so delightful. Going into her show This Is My Favorite Song, though, I wondered what an hour-long version of that would be. That is, in my experience, the tough part about what comedians like us do: can we do our “thing” for an hour and have it not feel like scattered bits? Can we get the pieces to add up to something, without selling out our humor for a corny one-man show life-lesson? Francesca managed to create a touching show about grief that is funny, wholly hers, at times deliberately dumb (I mean that as a compliment) – without feeling like it was overly-intentionally a touching show about grief.

Early in the show, the audience learns about the death of Francesca’s father, just a couple of years ago, from Covid. The brilliance of her show is that her humor is at odds with this. She’s fighting against it. She tells us that her agents slyly suggested she make a show out of it, which she resents. She does not want to be doing this. 

When something sad happens to a sentimental person, you sort of know what to expect. When something funny happens to a comedian, well, we know how that goes—but the magic of this show is in the tension between the ridiculous way in which Francesca sees the world and the real, devastating loss of her father. It ends up being both more human and funnier than most dramas or comedies. It is by all means a tragic comedy, which she makes seem effortless.

Francesca astutely shares anecdotes about babysitting, offering up impressions of the kids she’s nannied. This, coupled with the suit she’s wearing which stands in contrast to her humor, makes us feel like she’s a little kid playing pretend. She changes voices, she sings badly, she’s amused by the theater’s fog machine. It’s all hilarious and child-like. She draws attention to the absurdity of things we take for granted. After seeing her play with its over-the-top lighting cues, any big Broadway production that uses them earnestly feels like such a corny hack. 

Like a kid, she excitedly paints a picture of different scenes through songs and different voices (prominent among them an actually spot-on Shakira). She’s really, really good at this. She weaves entire scenarios so well, having fooled you into thinking she doesn’t know what she’s doing, given her shy demeanor and intentionally clunky lyrics. That’s because Francesca is an extremely talented performer who succeeds at playing her own game. She welcomes you into the humor and the pain, and you can’t help but cheer for her and wish to see more from her. 

There’s a version of Francesca’s oddities that is escapist—perhaps that’s the version she herself prefers or sought out to make when she began performing—but this show offers us something more beautiful and lasting than that. It gifts us a way of not escaping the sadness in the world, but in authentically coping with it. Go with a friend so you can sing her little songs to each other when you leave.