From Hyde Park Theatre, as Frontera Fest 2009 reaches for its finales:
The Hyde Park Theatre house was full last Tuesday and once again the staff put down an additional front row of folding chairs. It was a varied and, ultimately, a rich evening.
In Edges: Reflections on Female Identity, Amy McAndrew and Cindy Vining under the direction of Johanna Whitmore serve up a sweet-and-sharp buffet for the feminine condition. The single song (Rain and Snow, sung by Dry Branch Fire Squad) and five pieces take such remarkably different approaches that the effect is a bit like dipping repeatedly into a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Have a taste of - -
Austin bard David Jewell took the stage to great acclaim (maybe he's the reason the house was so crowded?). He did not disappoint. Dressed in a spiffy red jacket and clutching his red portfolio of clown poems, Jewell explored the quirkiness of a universe in which clowns are really people (or people are really clowns, take your pick). His blank verse is stark and witty, his stories tickle your fancy, and his utter seriousness about the utterly unreal is droll and seductive.
Marcella Garcia laid it all out in My Darkness. My Inheritance. She tells a long, involved story reaching back to the age of five when something very bad happened in her family and her relatives evidently expected her to understand it by some kind of osmosis. Garcia is slim and intense, carrying her striped box of many colors with sundry props, and her emphatically non-theatrical presence argued strongly that she was relating the truth and nothing but. Her writing was vivid, funny, thoughtful, appalling and convincing -- as she paced about the stage she provoked cackles from the audience, sympathy, horrified silence and, at the end, huge applause. Was this psychotherapy? It hardly matters. I was totally seduced by her fierce innocence and her patent vulnerability. For me, the best of the evening.
McSki, Confessions of A Couch Potato was a totally trivial character piece, written and performed with gusto by Bill Johnson with direction by Tim Mateer. Johnson had all the assurance and huge stage presence that Marcella Garcia lacked. We were all tickled at his concept of a "Couch Potatos Anonymous" with a membership of one, and a 12-step program that involves 6 steps to the refrigerator and back again. We ascended with him solo into the hazy revelations of a universe where physics is ruled by unknown particles, imagined by our cocooner to include "positivicles" and "optimisticles." And when Johnson boogies, he boogies -- to the great delight of the audience. This was fun.
Our Angle in Heaven by Maggie Gallant (left)
Ben Prager's Long Fringe presentation carried the title "Things in Life," sufficiently enigmatic to cover just about anything that he might have wanted to do. The fest blurb advised only, "Actor/playwright Ben Prager uses a series of monologues to portray with unblinking realism a half dozen familiar types in various stages of life."
Ben gives us a tour of Texas grotesques, individuals who are under stress or out of touch. His approach is to build a caricature and then to fill out that character's contours with emotion, often with pain. Prager's creative process is fascinating to watch, particularly for his plasticity of expression and his astounding mastery of accent and vocal nuance.
Ryan E. Johnson comments on four of his favorites in the Short Fringe, week 3: 
Gemma Wilcox is a lively and inventive woman with a serious case of multiple comic personalities. Her two-act show Leela's Wheel runs about an hour and you never know who (or what) she's going to be next.
Candlelight vigils, a dedicated website, Hannah's efforts to scoop some of that admiration and kumbaya feeling for herself . . . the focus is not on the dead boy but on his acquaintances' exploitation of his death. Melissa Recalde plays her breathy self-dramatizing character to the outer edges of parody, a director's decision that strengthens our sympathy for the relatively contained and nondescript Chloé.
Chase Wooldridge immediately opens The Bird by Al Smith, an almost-solo tour de force. The silent "Jacob" reveals himself in a driving Russian-accented monologue to be Jakob Mamontov, a man in his late teens or early twenties. Wooldridge paces with the energy of a caged animal, addressing a figure huddled under a blanket, remembering and recounting his life, driven by stresses that we do not initially understand. He gathers fury gradually and inexorably as he reveals himself and his past. Wooldridge's intensity, modulation and control of this evolution are gripping.
Isolated in an attic as an infant, wrapped with his Russian mother in a hot, lonely embrace over the years, Jacob is completely asocial and untutored. She reluctantly allows him to attend school, dressing him in girl's clothing. Jacob the feral child can't speak English. The other children, in their own social bubbles, ignore him. A teacher's distracted explanation and illustration of geometry strikes Jacob like a thunderbolt. Indifferent and without surprise, the teacher sets him straight, provides him with appropriate clothing and the opportunity to learn.
Trying to save Eva, Jacob blackmails a transport official into giving him a job as a cleaner. Meagre wages are not enough to break their slavery. Eva falls ill. Late at night at the traffic authority Jacob begins to meddle with the computers, as revenge for the indifference surrounding them. He finds the high school's website in memory of Luke, contacts and courts the unseen Chloé and eventually, desperate, comes to ask Eva what to do. His world is collapsing.
