About This Long

'Sad, Sad, Sad: Parts 1 & 2' (Photo by Bret Brookshire)

When it comes to the FronteraFest Long Fringe, just how long is long? By that, we don't mean the length of the shows in minutes; we know that every work in this section of the annual performance festival has a running time between an hour and an hour and a half. No, we're talking about a measure of artistic creativity, theatrical ingenuity, or maybe just plain daring. What lengths are the artists who have mounted shows this year willing to go to excite, enthrall, or entertain its audiences, particularly given that this festival thrives on the unexpected and creative risk-taking. Last week, the Chronicle Arts team hit the first week of the 2008 Long Fringe to let you know how 11 of the 12 shows measure up. Dates and times for the remaining performances of each production follow the reviews. Except for Shoeless, which is performed at the Hideout, 617 Congress, all shows are performed at the Blue Theater, 916 Springdale. Ticket prices vary. For reservations, call 479-PLAY. For the full schedule and more information, visit www.hydeparktheatre.org. – Robert Faires

'Sad, Sad, Sad: Parts 1 & 2'

In the second part of this two-part play, God is a blonde in a white pantsuit and spiky, white pumps who sleeps with her head on a desk, piles of paper and blond hair spilling forth, for the whole play. For two guys who just arrived in purgatory, this God is a sight for sore eyes. Unfortunately, to get a second chance at their misspent lives, they have to kill her. But then, in a move that smacks of Groundhog Day, a third assassin enters to confess that for years he has been trapped in a cycle of killing God again and again – that's his fate for eternity. The conversation among God's would-be assassins zips between clever remarks and big stuff like truth and existence, so it feels like deeper questions are bubbling beneath the play's surface, but it's hard to say exactly what they are. But if you feel like you're missing something, be grateful that after the play's over, you can return to life without having to kill anybody.

Part one of Sad, Sad, Sad didn't hold my attention as much. I think it was the continuous pitch of angst and shouting throughout that fatigued me. I can see why four guys working on a mystery bomb project in a military research facility in Nevada might want to yell. They are burdened with the weight of their secret plot, which, it turns out, will kill all in utero babies in the world. But do they have to yell so much? – Clayton Maxwell

Thursday, Jan. 31, 7pm; Saturday, Feb. 2, 10:15pm.

'Shoeless or the Advantages of Not Knowing Exactly Where You Are Going'

The new Fox reality show The Moment of Truth gives contestants the chance to win a fortune by answering tough personal questions while hooked up to a lie detector. Now take the premise of The Moment of Truth and inject some creativity, humor, risk, and existential angst, and you've got Who Am I?, the game show at the heart of Shoeless. (Truth is stranger than fiction, pah!)

Shoeless is Bree Perlman and director D.S. Moss' adaptation of the Donald Barthelme short story "Shower of Gold." Barthelme was known for his experimental style and ironic or absurd plots, and his fans will be pleased to know that Shoeless strives to re-create his unique world. The play follows sculptor Karl Peterson and his fellow contestants as they answer difficult, revealing questions. If they answer falsely, they are forced to watch cryptically surreal scenes of their past. After watching, they're given the chance to reconsider their answers. As the show goes on, the questions become increasingly existential in nature.

This is the only Long Fringe show being performed at the Hideout, and Moss' direction really takes advantage of the space. With its audience participation, dark humor, and intriguing premise, Shoeless is sure to be one of the hits of this year's FronteraFest. – Avimaan Syam

Thursday, Jan. 31, 8pm; Friday, Feb. 1, 8pm; Saturday, Feb. 2, 8pm.

'You're Happier Than You Think: Recalibrating Your Emotional Scale'

If you feel like having a laugh at the expense of Club Med, then You're Happier Than You Think: Recalibrating Your Emotional Scale is a good bet. Lecturer Bradley is hosting a happiness seminar aboard a cruise ship, with the help of his noticeably unhappy family. The captain's drunk, pirates are nearby, and there's the looming threat of shuffleboard throughout.

It's a screwball comedy without much direction, in any sense of the word. The cast stumbles and shuffles without any confidence in where they're supposed to be standing. The script sails here and there without much in the way of navigation. Nobody's steering the cruise ship, either.

You're Happier Than You Think shows a family attempting to be happy in spite of their ridiculous dysfunction, and that's fairly heartwarming. However, when a character asks, "What is the reason you're telling us?" and gets no answer, that's a good sign that it's time to put into harbor. – Elizabeth Cobbe

Thursday, Jan. 31, 9:15pm; Saturday, Feb. 2, 6:15pm; Sunday, Feb. 3, noon.

'I Google Myself'

I Google Myself is about violent gay porn.

Some will say that's not true, that it tells a dark story about three manipulative, secretive men while shedding light on unseen corners of the human condition. But mostly, it's about a stalker who loves violent gay porn.

At the start, a nervous, nerdy guy in a polo shirt attempts to interview a porn star for a newspaper story. The two just so happen to share the same name, although it's just a screen name for the porn star. The reporter claims he Googled himself and discovered 37 references to a porn star ahead of himself. He thought it would make a good story.

Turns out, the porn star stole his screen name from the bully who ruined his life in junior high. And the newspaper writer isn't a newspaper writer. The hunt begins, and let's just say that if you keep a blog now, you will think twice after seeing Jason Schafer's I Google Myself.

"Names connect people," asserts the geek in the polo. So do crazy, malicious stalkers. – E.C.

Friday, Feb. 1, 7pm.

Photo by Bret Brookshire

'The Mommy Confessions'

"Eric Beal, you get your hands out of your pants right this minute. You're just like your daddy. Good grief ... Memaw loves you, too, you little shit." With this opening rant, the cantankerous Memaw, played by Rhonda Kulhanek, lets us know what's in store: The Mommy Confessions is a gutsy look at motherhood that may not be pretty, but it's sure to be funny.

As the sole writer and performer, Kulhanek is a one-woman cyclone. Playing 12 different women – from jilted wife to pregnant girl armed with Easy Cheese – she changes roles and wardrobe with more ease than Cher. This ease comes in part from familiarity; she has been performing versions of The Mommy Confessions in the FronteraFest Short Fringe for several years now. The benefits of this are clear: Kulhanek embodies her characters as if they are dear old friends. They are as real as the pantyhose sagging at Memaw's ankles.

There is a sweet relief in Kulhanek's freedom to make fun while shouting out the hard truths that many mothers face. Her characters' complaints may not be yours, but certainly you've heard them before. Not unlike a session of Mommy's Anonymous, Kulhanek's willingness "to say anything, anything at all" as a mom gives us the relief of honesty amid many good laughs. – C.M.

Friday, Feb. 1, 9:15pm; Saturday, Feb. 2, 8pm.

Photo by Bret Brookshire

'Jack and the King'

That fella in the White House ain't the first Georgieboy to struggle with getting his own way. Austin Alexander's Jack and the King is a political satire, with Shakespearean undertones, which follows the tribulations of King George II after he gets shipwrecked.

Jack, an islander, plays the straight man to the blustery king after he washes ashore. King George can't fathom a place where his divine rule isn't immediately acknowledged, where there's no real government, and, worst of all, there's no pig flesh to eat, while Jack can't fathom living under such a moronic tyrant again. As more characters arrive on Jack's once peaceful island, they bring more and more issues regarding King George's reign.

Jack and the King does have its fair share of exposition about the problems and potential of governmental rule, but at least it's aware of it: One servant climbs on an actual soapbox to deliver his speech, discussions are broken up with sword fights replete with Street Fighter II-style audiences, and there are more than a few coconut-rum drinks to go around. King never lets its political motives get in the way of a good story or a good joke, and in the end it plays out just like a Shakespearean comedy should. – A.S.

Friday, Feb. 1, 11:30pm; Sunday, Feb. 3, 7:45pm.

'Paper Weight'

Born out of a University of Texas graduate course analyzing autobiography, Paper Weight is an exploration of iconic women artists of the 20th century. Weight's four monologues explore the sacrifices and triumphs of these figures while incorporating autobiographical elements of the performers, as well.

We're first introduced to Zelda Fitzgerald, who at 46 finds she can't live life as a fairy tale anymore. Fitzgerald, played by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta, is confined to a room in a mental hospital, where she has little to do save amass her flock of paper cranes. We only hear Fitzgerald's side of a conversation with a doctor, and despite her fertile imagination and publicized past, it's depressingly clear that Fitzgerald has no one to tell stories to save her psychiatrist.

Kristin Leahey's piece on Margaret Bourke-White, a prominent photojournalist, focuses on the memories and vignettes that made Bourke-White known as "Maggie the Indestructible." Leahey's piece is more abstract, shuffling among themes, stories, and phrases, and the inclusion of her own autobiographical bits does enhance the effect of Bourke-White's tale.

Priscilla Sample plays both character-in-role, as well as historian in her piece on Margo Jones. Sample, whose Short Fringe script was voted into the first Best of Week showcase, admits straightaway that acting isn't her forte, but her more conversational style doesn't prevent her piece from being any less interesting or educational.

Missing due to illness was Meg Sullivan, who was to perform Virginia Woolf. Presumably she'll be well enough for their next show. – A.S.

Saturday, Feb. 2, noon.

'Dance Carousel' 2008

If you have only 60 seconds to make a dance, you might as well have some fun with it. That looks to have been the thinking of most of the 10 choreographers in this year's edition of Dance Carousel, a Long Fringe staple in its fifth year. Each dance maker gets four shots at a minutelong piece, with many developing a single idea or story over the four installments, as Nancy Bain does with a series describing a woman moving from a beach into deeper and deeper waters. Whimsy has never been in short supply in Dance Carousel, but this year's version feels more playful than most. Carousel creator Ellen Bartel leads the way with a work pairing four dancers with life-sized blow-up dolls. (After watching these inflatables float suggestively to David Bowie's "Space Oddity," I'll never be able to hear that song the same way again.) Caroline Sutton Clark's piece fulfills the fantasy of many a performer by confronting, and ultimately turning the tables on, an audience member using a cell phone. Ellen Stader's broadly comic "Conquest" has its heroine get the best of a Latin lothario, but even more fun are her pair of funk-fueled dances (including a serious flashback to the Bicentennial). Add in Myia Little and Nikki Johnson in tutus channeling their inner children playing ballerinas; Amanda Oakley and Randi Turkin doing a slow, sensuous grind to the Coasters' "Down in Mexico"; and nine dancers wiggling their backsides in Annie Hudson's "Bottoms Up," and you're in one delightful playground for movement. – R.F.

Saturday, Feb. 2, 2:15pm.

'Luna Tart Died (of a Broken Heart)'

A failed actress and cabaret entertainer, Luna Tart, as played by Laura Freeman, has descended to the depths of bag-ladydom. After a funny introduction by Lovey & Lovey, two tippling Brits (Michael Jastroch and Tami Nelson of ColdTowne Theater), the aptly named Tart enters pushing a red shopping cart filled, most noticeably, with two apparently identical ukuleles. She's been around the block – in more ways than one. Mostly, she sings original songs while strumming her ukes, but she also tells us about her past lives as an actress and singer and, especially, about all the men she's had. One of the most entertaining songs she assays is, in fact, about how much she likes to spend Johnny's money.

I wish all the songs had been like that one. While Freeman writes clever lyrics and has a great voice – whenever she sings tremolo, you want to fall at her feet and worship her – too many of the tunes had a slow, lilting tempo that tended to enervate. In addition, the "book" by Freeman and director Rudy Ramirez was so disjointed and rambling as to be almost nonsensical. But while I didn't have a great time, I was in the vast minority, as all but three in the packed house stood and cheered at the end. – Barry Pineo

Saturday, Feb. 2, 4:15pm.

'Prepare for Arrival and Cross Check'

Prepare for Arrival and Cross Check shows you everything you ever wanted to know about the lives of flight attendants, as well as plenty of stuff you didn't. Compiled from interviews with actual flight attendants (don't say "stewardess"), the show describes the ups and downs of working for a major airliner. So to speak.

Basically, planes are squalid, the schedule stinks, but the people who stick with it love the profession. They have some great stories. Prepare for Arrival makes the curious choice to add a few song-and-dance numbers. The songs are simplistic and sporadic, and the choreography is stifled, given that half the cast is wearing pencil skirts.

It's automatic now that any show about flight attendants will address September 11. Steve Barney's production plays a recording of flight attendant Betty Ann Ong's report to flight control from Flight 11 after the hijacking had begun. Remarkably, there is little to no panic in her voice. Those moments say as much about flight attendants as the rest of the show together. – E.C.

Sunday, Feb. 3, 1:45pm.

'Lost/Found'

Lost/Found is the debut performance of Surface Tension Dance Group, described as "a collaborative company of dancers with musicians and visual artists." An interesting proposal, but, unfortunately, this production is underwhelming. The main problem is that there is very little material. The production comprises seven dances that are each about three minutes long. There was too much dead time between pieces and an unnecessary intermission. The choreography was rarely dynamic. The original music employed ocean sounds and felt repetitive. The "visual art" element was projected video footage of the dancers rehearsing. It was lovely footage but did not add depth to the performance. There was an interesting stab at employing text. The fifth dance was underscored not with music but with spoken phrases such as "Where is my sanity?" and "I used to have an edge." These ideas were then resolved in the seventh and final dance. A good idea for structure, but the acting was hesitant, and the themes of losing and finding felt forced. Hopefully, Surface Tension Dance Group will come to its next performance with a more substantial and dynamic bulk of work. – Hannah Kenah

Sunday, Feb. 3, 5:45pm.