With a title like It Came From Beneath the Kilt!!!, it would have to be one of the "Best of the Fringe" from San Francisco's ninth annual Fringe Festival. The Doctor Emile's Theatre Tremendo camp comedy joins Black Box Theatre Company's Chain Reactions, Theatre Ridiculous' Imbecillus: A Lunatic Quest, Banana, Bag and Bodice's Number 2, Carol Lempert in That Dorothy Parker and Rawhide Theatre's Treachery as 2000's winners, chosen by the Fringe audience.

Their prize? Two more nights of performance Sept. 29-30 at the Exit Theatre and Exit Stage Left.

On Stage Left will be Chain Reactions, Number 2 and That Dorothy Parker. In Reactions, Trevor Allen conducts four voices in a performance symphony on the subjects of physics, fear and love. Number 2 is an absurdist children's show, unfortunately not for children. A 1998 hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival, Dorothy Parker is a one-woman take on the acidic poet and writer, who was part of that famous literary circle, the Algonquin Round Table.

On the Exit Stage, Imbecillus, Kilt!!! and Treachery strut their final moments in the Fringe. A new product from Theatre Ridiculous, a 1999 Best of Fringe winner for Mumble in Numbskull, Imbecillus features the same existential ensemble clown company. With gore and camp in equal amounts, It Came From Beneath the Kilt!!! is set in a Scottish castle, where David Charles Scarpelli, Peter Budinger and Kevin Kelleher have crafted all kinds of hilarious horrors. Treachery is three short comic plays on the subject of betrayal, as two Mafiosi riff on loyalty, a young woman tries to force her priest to agree she's committed adultry and a woman mourning her late tennis partner falls for an Englishman obsessed with the Revolutionary War.

Tickets to Best of the Fringe are $14. The Exit Theatre and Exit Stage Left are located at 156 Eddy Street. For information, schedules and tickets, call (415) 673-3847 or visit the Fringe on the web at http://www.sffringeorg. -- By Christine Ehren