The Check Is in the E-mail

It sounds sublime: A C-list television actor receives an e-mail from a con artist who’s posing as the wife of a dead Nigerian leader in need of cash. The actor — Dean Cameron, star of the Ski School movies and Mark Harmon’s co-star in 1987’s Summer School — writes back, pretending to be a sexually confused millionaire with a lot of time on his hands. What follows is a nine-month correspondence full of goofy subterfuge and deception. Bored with his lagging career, the actor writes a play about the experience, using the actual e-mails as a duologue between himself and another actor. The play is a global hit.

It’s all true. Cameron’s The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam lasts just under an hour but, if critics are to be believed, is jammed with laughs and looniness. Originally performed as a workshop production, Spam Scam went on to critical acclaim at Scotland’s 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Upon its return to these shores, a remount of the show ran for nearly four months before launching a tour that will stop at Scottsdale’s Theater 4301.

Sat., Feb. 7, 8 p.m., 2009