Longtime local theater-maker Ki Gottberg has written some good plays of the fractured-fairy-tale variety, but she’s taking a risk with Frontier: an autobiographical solo show, with help from director John Kazanjian.

Frontier is heartbreaking in two ways. First, it’s got tough material: the story of how a girl broke with her immigrant parents (German-Jewish and Indian-Anglo), how she couldn’t have a baby, how she eventually made a baby (with her husband’s sperm and her sister’s womb), and how that baby came down with cancer.

Second, despite the heartbreaking material, the show is not very good. Gottberg’s delivery is performative and showy—she giggles and shrieks and hams up her parents’ accents—but it doesn’t land its emotional punches. A one-person show doesn’t have to be self-centered, but this one falls deep into that hole. She doesn’t do the work to coax us into her head and make us feel her pain. Gottberg simply tells her pain and expects us to feel it, too. While reflexive sympathy is a virtue in most areas of life, it is not incumbent upon people who’ve swapped $15 for a little over an hour of their lives.

Frontier’s most jarring moment comes toward the end of the show, when Gottberg is wailing over her child’s horrible wrestling match with death. “Why me, God?” she howls—but never “why her?” The devil is in the pronouns. recommended