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Art Beat

Cheap Thrills

By Sarah Phelan

Afraid of commitment--at least in your relationship with theater? Understandable, if you've been burned by high prices, mediocre material and low satisfaction in previous acting affairs. Even so, check out Nine Tens @ Eight at Actor's Theatre. It's the ultimate cheap date--one ticket will buy you a brief fling with nine award-winning plays, each entirely different and only 10 minutes long. This wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am style has been a long time coming to the stage, but it's a logical approach in a nation noted for shrinking attention spans and addicted to sampling the merchandise before investing large sums of time or money.

Think of Nine Tens @ Eight as the theatrical equivalent to wine tasting, free samples at Costco or potluck parties. It exposes us to a wide range of talented playwrights, performers and directors all displayed for our greater mental titillation on one glorious roller coaster of a night. Comic highs from the absurdly funny Loud Chess, Parcheesied and Turning into Mother are matched by emotional deep-diving in the tragicomedy Ashes and the heavy but masterful Civitella. You'll go home, your head spinning with strange notions. Was the Mona Lisa a self-portrait of da Vinci in drag? Do ashes dumped at sea blow in your hair?

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Nine Tens @ Eight plays Thu.-Sat. (8pm) and Sun. (3pm) through Jan. 28. at Actor's Theatre, 1001 Center St., SC. Tickets cost $10 ($8 students and seniors). Call 425 PLAY for reservations.


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