Two Weeks Left to Fronteracize
As some things wind down, others are winding up in Frontera land. The Long Fringe and Bring Your Own Venue are over. Only one week of regular shows remains for the Short Fringe, with the fabulous Best of Fest thereafter. The very intriguing Mi Casa Es Su Teatro is this coming Saturday. Frontera is a little more than halfway through, with some of the best nights yet to come.
We were sad to miss last weekend's Best of Week, which the Austin Chronicle reported was solid...and full o' improv. Improv? Improv! Let's see. That's one in Week 1. Two in Week 2. And another in Week 3; so, if our math is correct, there have been four improv groups in the Best of Weeks for Frontera 2006. We're wondering...what gives with all this improv? Have the comedians been breeding while we weren't tending to them? Or perhaps they've been...cloning themselves? Egads! This is a curious phenomenon. Look for some hard-hitting investigative journalism about this matter, coming soon.
Until then, we'll tell you about Frontera, Week 3. In short, it paled in comparison to Week 1. Several of the performances were very rough, and while we do like improv just as much as the next guy, the improvising we saw on Saturday was not up-to-par. Ironically, one thing we're not so crazy about is poetry, and yet the stand-out performance of the night, by far, was an energetic, hysterical, and yes, touching manifesto from Big Poppa E. This man is a powerhouse -- we became instant, life-long fans -- but we're getting ahead of ourselves. More on Mr. E momentarily.
The first performance of the evening was Please Come Back by Charley Devany, starring Devany and Amy Levin. The piece was a sort of Sixth Sense-restaurant-scene meets Garrison Keillor-dating-skit. That is to say, it was sometimes funny and sometimes confusing. And it centered on a scene in a restaurant. But clocking in at under 10 minutes, it was quite simply too short and seemed unfinished. The acting was top notch, but the scene needed to be fleshed out. In its current state, it left us momentarily baffled -- until we moved on to the next piece and forgot about it.
Next up was the amusing Hot Dogs at the Eiffel Tower, written and performed by Maggie Gallant. Ms. Gallant describes herself as a stand-up comedian, though this performance was really a lengthy, auto-biographical monologue. It was very interesting -- Gallant covered a lot of material in elegant enough fashion. She's an affable performer with a world-weary air (and not just 'cause she's British). At times, though, she seemed a bit nervous, and the pacing of her piece was a little off. Because of this, she sometimes seemed to be telling her story, rather than performing it. Nevertheless, her's was easily our second-favorite of the night, and we would surely not turn down a chance to check out her stand-up. (As a matter of fact, she's playing the free show tonight at Cap City Comedy Club, so there ya go.)
Third on the bill was the super-great fun-fun being dished out by Big Poppa E in The Wussy Boy Manifesto II: Electric Boogaloo!!. We apparently have been living under a rock, because E is an "HBO Def Poet and three-time FronteraFest Best of Fest'er," and yet this is the first we've heard of him. Well, okay, maybe we've not so much been living under a rock as studiously avoiding anything even remotely related to poetry at all costs. But served up BPE-style, poetry is raucous, funny as hell, and super-fast-paced-yet-always-intelligible. BPE covered plenty of ground, from Canadian crushes to teen angst (and we mean genuinely moving teen angst, which we oughta know about since we're an evil stepmom to 1.5 teenagers). In particular, one work about a woman's slow climb out of the frightening, strange world of anorexia spoke strongly to us, and really stayed in our minds. There were plenty of light moments, too, and we didn't want the fun to end. BPE's performance style is so full of energy, though, that we suspect he couldn't keep up the pace for as long as we would have him. Like, hours and hours? Okay, enough said.
After intermission, we were greeted by a set made almost entirely of cardboard. It was nifty. Three cardboard cubicles, with cardboard monitors, cardboard keyboards, and even little cardboard mice. Our Employees Are Our Top Priority, written by Jodi Leckbee and directed by Theresa Leckbee, is Office Space with a conscience. In this work, the down-trodden employees are each given a chance to step into a spotlight and tell the audience their life tragedies. Their language is beautiful and fluid, but the piece as a whole was kind of clunky. The acting was stiff (with the noted exception of Katherine Brock, whose spunk and style impressed us), and the book-ended office story seemed contrived. We're not sure how this work could be re-imagined in a format we'd find more appealing, but in its current format, the juxtaposition of office life with inner life came off as stilted and ineffective.
Last up to bat was Hoover's Blanket Presents Fresh Strawberries by, you guessed it, Hoover's Blanket. This self-described "Full-Tilt Boogie Absurdist Sketch Comedy" did not work for us. Agreed, it was full-tilt. There was probably some boogie. And it was absurd. But putting those three ingredients together in sketch comedy format doesn't necessarily make for an entertaining 25 minutes of theatre. Perhaps we have no taste for the so-called absurd, but what we experienced was some rather goofy, not-terribly-funny skit work. Ethel Merman sings the rules of Fight Club? Funny, if you've got someone who can impersonate Ethel Merman...which the Hoovers folks do not. John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, and an unnamed starlet argue with Godzilla -- on the set of a Coen Brothers' film, no less -- about his coke habit? As far as Godzilla humor goes, it wasn't even remotely on par with, say, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Besides, with all the King Kong and Peter Jackson chatter that's been in the air lately, it just came off as quasi-topical, and, well, off. Not absurd.
But we weren't terribly annoyed because Big Poppa E saved the evening! We're very jazzed about discovering a talent that the rest of Austin, apparently, has known about for years. And we have Frontera Fest to thank for it. Heck, we're even considering venturing out to our very first poetry slam in...okay, ever. Wonder whether anyone will read our most favorite of poems, which is, of course, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Here's hoping!
Frontera Fest continues for just two more weeks! Check out the details at Hyde Park Theatre's website!
* Image (c) Hyde Park Theatre
