Dispatches From the Edge

Photo By Bret Brookshire

Going Public

Running Time: 50 min

So what if you and two of your friends started a company together, swearing to each other that it would always be about the three of you and your common goal? So what if you achieved your goal and found yourselves surrounded by investors dying to give you their cash? So what if you were being bombarded by a society that insists that the only true road to success is in taking the money and running as fast as you can in the other direction? Just to add some spice, what if this compelling situation involved one straight couple, one gay couple, and a pair of brothers, one of whom appears to be asexual and the other -- well, your guess is as good as mine.

And that's just the first act. This FronteraFest production of Ann Ciccolella's original script is, in a way, a pure tease because you only get to see the beginning of the story. The next act (or acts) is not presented here. Perhaps it isn't even written yet. Like the stock figures on a digital display, ideas fly fast and furious from a group of slick performers that seem so comfortable with the complicated ideas and language of the tech world that they could have stepped out of a startup and onto the stage at the Hideout. While each of the six actors have much to recommend them, Helen Merino, Stewart McGregor, and J. Damian Gillen impress as the trio of friends at the center of whirlwind. Each projects a comfort with the others, so it's easy to believe they've been together for a long time.

Like a copy of Microsoft Windows, it's got bugs. As in many other FronteraFest presentations, production values are almost nonexistent. Also, the actors sometimes stumble over each other's and their own lines, but it wouldn't surprise me if Ciccolella, who also directed, was tweaking and massaging just before the lights came up. This much is certain: She has taken a premise that jumps right out of this morning's paper and peopled it with characters as diverse as modern society. So if you don't mind a big tease, want to see a play in its birth throes, and go to see this sparkling new script, you'll most likely be left with the same question I'm asking -- and a better question any story cannot hope to engender: What happens next? (Saturday, Feb. 3, noon; Sunday, Feb. 4, 7:15pm)