Francesca D’Uva moved across the rehearsal room, singing and dancing, making the space her playground.
Her voice jumped from a guttural, emo-metal drone to a high-pitched, almost operatic belt to a soft serenade. She played a surreal cast of characters: a sexy nurse from a Wii game she used to play; British children looking for the nanny of their dreams; Shakira.
The show was an emotional pinball machine, seeming to invite laughter and tears. In one scene, she conjured the memory of her kindergarten Nativity play in which she was cast as a cow.
“Everybody’s laughing at me, everybody’s mooing at me,” she sang.
A familiar face in New York’s alternative comedy scene, Ms. D’Uva, 30, performs regularly at venues around the city and has appeared on television in “Three Busy Debras” and “Fantasmas.” Vulture named her a “Comedian You Should and Will Know” in 2024.
With the Off Broadway premiere this week of “This Is My Favorite Song,” her solo show at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan, she takes her genre-defying act to a new arena.
