It stands to reason five short plays will be of varied quality, but for Program B, the final weekend of the fourth Future Ten festival of 10-minute plays, the achievement is high throughout. I can't remember when I had such consistent fun at a similar theatrical grab bag.

Fred Betzner's "12 Sided Die" is a geekfest bachelor party, as four Dungeons & Dragons fanatics gather in honor of their buddy, who's leaving their games world ("it is not a game!") to (shudder) get married. I imagine it's funnier to those who know the lingo, but it was funny enough to me, especially when a non-D&D fan arrives, followed by a hired D&D version of what might be a stripper at the more usual bachelor party.

Just when the whining becomes repetitious, the evening tightens into what it is more seriously about all along, the importance and frailty of friendship and the relationship of games to reality, for which dramaturgic Dungeon Master Betzner has a D&D-based twist. The unevenness of director Brad Stephenson's cast doesn't much matter because the two central actors, Glenn Bailey Jr. and Josh Futrell, are fine; even the epic 17-minute length doesn't seem excessive.

Sloan MacRae's "Tex/Sex," directed by Stacey Vespaziani, is audaciously simple, a rhetorical encounter between Tex (Robert Isenberg), an old-style western swaggerer -- think John Wayne preening his way through the mythic eons -- and Sex (Joe Jasek), a k a Dude, an equally self-obsessed pretty boy in the latest mode. Guess who wins? I might say it isn't a play, but it's really an 11-minute version of Sam Shepard's immortal "Tooth of Crime," which certainly is.

Kelly DuMar's "The Cell" finds two teenagers at a cemetery, waiting for a friend to return. The girl (Natalia Dove) has come to visit the grave of a dead boyfriend, while the guy (Johnny Terreri) has come to prey on the girl. It's creepy but insidiously so, never lurid -- a well-directed (by Lissa Brennan) pas de deux of revelation. The two actors have a lithe reality that makes watching almost voyeuristic.

The lightest weight of the five, Gayle Pazerski's "Viewers Like You," directed by Stephenson, discovers no-holds-barred warfare beneath the formula gentility of a public television pledge drive. An insanely enthusiastic volunteer (Linda Haston) subverts a cool young novice executive (Pazerski) in her pursuit of a tote-bag reward, but the novice is a quick learner. I loved the careful parody of the language and characteristic PBS premiums.

The program spirals finally into smart, surreal parody with Isenberg's "post-script," directed by Joseph Lyons. It starts as the trailer for an adventure flick, proceeds to watch heroic killer Dirk (Jeffrey Carpenter) strew the stage with bodies to save civilization and rescue the fair maiden (Libby Frandsen Jones), and then plays with the aftermath, in which the aching hero and his dissatisfied babe kvetch about the downside of their career path. Isenberg has a finely tuned ear for the ludicrous, and Carpenter is the epitome of Bruce Willis putting in another day's work.

But for the audience, it's no work at all -- just 67 fun minutes and the evening's still young.

Future Ten 4, Program B, ends at 8 tonight at 819 Penn Ave., Downtown; doors open at 7:30; $10; 412-612-9000.