With ten final pieces spread out over two nights, the 2012 FronteraFest Short Fringe came to a satisfying close this weekend at Hyde Park Theatre. Despite the nasty weather outside, the performers enjoyed one last hurrah with this year's productions, playing to overly-packed houses both nights.

Culled from the 80 initial entries that performed over the 16 nights of the Fest, these ten were the pieces chosen by audiences as the most outstanding and noteworthy performances. Making it through to their Best of Week shows, they were again chosen to represent their work at the Best of the Fest. Other standout shows were also chosen by the FronteraFest and ScriptWorks staff to play once more at the Best of the Week Wild Card show on Thursday evening.

I had a tougher time getting in to Saturday's Best of Fest Group A shows than Sunday's Group B lineup. The standouts from that night, in my opinion, were really about the quality of the performances, and for completely opposite reasons.

First, actor Tom McTigue nailed the emotional depth of a tough guy whose heart is broken over his little brother's death in ScriptWorks playwright Beth Broderick's monologue, Marilyn. Honest, subtle dramatic monologues aren't always easy to find in a fringe festival that features mostly larger-than-life comedy, so seeing McTigue deliver a simple, heartfelt story was incredibly refreshing.

At the end of the night, Bob McNichol and Erika May's Breeders accomplished a similar satisfying performance level. With their series of humorous scenes depicting new parents coping with being new parents, they kept their humor tight and effortless. It was easy to sit back and enjoy all of their well thought out tactics and new approaches to modern day parenting.

Sunday evening's Best of Fest B program was book ended by fun autobiographical tales of lonely children saved by musical theatre. Meg Peck opened with her piece, Musical Theater and Other Drugs, which vacillated between Peck playing her adolescent, Cheetos and Chorus Line-loving self and her no-nonsense, fact-based personified superego. She had some great lines and genuinely alarming statements from her childhood that kept the piece feeling fresh.

At the end of the evening, Joe Hartman's Idol Worship told his familiar but personal story of finding his (impressively massive) voice with the help of his holy trinity of divas: Miss Piggy, Carol Burnett and Judy Garland. While he may not have tread new ground for most of the audience, he does have a unique voice and some pretty great one-liners. Of course. both of these shows ended on a big musical number, just as you'd imagine they might.

FronteraFest veteran Rhonda Kulhanek got the parents in Sunday night's audience rolling with her spot-on Modern Day Mom public access TV show sketch. Her character, Laura Lynn Loving's accent was almost as amazing as her horrendous parenting advice. Also worth noting, Kulhanek has been using FronteraFest as a chance to try out new characters for her eventual full-length one-woman show, The Mommy Confessions.

Meanwhile, comical magic act Turning Tricks with the Darlings received a standing ovation for their mind blowing magic tricks. Two magicians alternated performing impressive feats, revealing a couple tricks and otherwise just astounding the audience. Their otherworldly musical accompaniment helped transport the piece to another place, helping to remind us this was real magic.

But my favorite performance over the course of the entire Fest this year was ScriptWorks playwright Tom Horan's "toy theater" piece, The King and the Clockmaker. This wonderfully inventive piece managed to focus our attention on just a suitcase-sized puppet theater that sat in the center of the stage. Instead of playing the characters of the story themselves, two performers placed miniature figures into the diorama-like stage as a pre-recorded story played in the background.

Audience members were invited to come sit on the stage to get a better view of the detailed figures; but even from my seat in the back of the theater, my attention was rapt to the silhouetted backdrops, the alternating spotlights and the sheer creativity of the concept. This was the only piece that absolutely changed my perceptions of the space and even introduced me to a new style of theatre.

While not all of the Best of Fest pieces blew me away to the degree of Horan's, they were all well-executed or conceptually sound. Again, this is the constant gambling thrill of the Short Fringe: you never know what you're going to get.

Hopefully Hyde Park Theatre Artistic Director Ken Webster and ScriptWorks Executive Director Christi Moore can take a much deserved break from their month-long marathon of new theater. Hyde Park Theatre will go back to producing their quality cutting-edge productions, starting with The Aliens by Annie Baker starting March 22. And ScriptWorks will perform their 24-hour playwriting competition, Out of Ink, starting April 19 at the Blue Theatre.

See y'all again next year!