As her self professed first foray into the world of one woman shows, FINGERS CROSSED has Writer and Performer Stacy Cancelarich playing to her strengths as both a stand up comedian and social worker. Chronicling her father’s rapid decline from the triple whammy of Alzheimer’s, Lung Cancer, and a car accident, Cancelarich deftly navigates the collapse of her immediate family the way any good Borscht Belt comedian would. When firing on all cylinders, Cancelarich
is able to draw humor out of any situation she finds herself in, reveling in the literal and metaphorical insanity found in some of her darkest moments.
Michael Gardiner, both director and developer, very clearly understands how to utilize Cancelarich’s stand up skills to maintain momentum. The play waivers between moments that
feel more traditionally “Stand-up” and more traditionally “Theater” depending on the needs, keeping the audience engaged through a series of thematic key changes. Cancelarich’s
narcissistic, compulsive, co-morbid mother seamlessly transitions between being the butt of a joke and a character in the room with us depending on where the tone of the show needs to be at any given moment.
Cancelarich does slip up at times. It’s clear that there is a learning curve to the one woman show that her work in stand up has prepared her for, but occasionally the “stand up” of the
performance gets in the way of the theatricality (and vice versa). There are moments where Cancelarich leans too hard into pure Broadway comedy cellar, with stretches of the performance feeling like I’m at the joke gym rather than a black box theater. Cancelarich zigs in places where she should have zagged, but in the end she’s good enough at both zigging and zagging that these feel like creative issues rather than structural ones. Cancelarich does have her work
cut out for her, but fingers crossed we’ll see her on stage again soon.
The Independent Artists movement 