It’s not everyone who can out-con the notorious Nigerian con men, but Dean Cameron managed to do it. The veteran TV and theater actor explains how he pulled off the stunt in Nigerian Spam Scam Scam, his hilarious play which just had a successful run at the recent Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Cameron, playing himself, is joined on stage by Victor Isaac, a wizard at voices who impersonated various Nigerian characters during the course of the show, including a female tribal chief and her officious nephew, a banker, and a custom’s-house official.
Standing before computer stations which connected them across continents, Cameron and Isaacs play this elaborate cat-and-mouse game with each other, exchanging messages having to do with the hundred million dollars which will be released to the American, providing he immediately wires three thousand bucks by Western Union. Thanks to overhead projection and spoken dialogue, the audience is privy to the year-long correspondence between sucker and grifter. Cameron’s script built humor and suspense in equal amounts, with the assorted Nigerians becoming more and more desperate and irate as the former toys with them in masterful fashion, pretending all the while to be fooled by their ridiculous stories.
It’s always delicious fun to watch a victim best his oppressor, which is why Nigerian Spam proved such an audience-favorite at the festival.
