It's a hit - well, at least it's a break-even, which is victory enough for a first-time venture.

Cincinnati Fringe Festival wraps today with Pick of the Fringe, a final performance of the three top vote-getters in a trio of categories.

My pick for Best of the Fringe, locals Tara Guilfoil and Natalie Bolan's Time Outside My Body, is also the Audience Choice winner and will be reprised at 2 p.m. at Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (44 E. Sixth St.)

"I'm so excited! I'm walking on air!" says Guilfoil.

Body is an arresting multimedia performance about a date rape. The goal, says Guilfoil, is to take it to university campuses and to other fringe festivals.

"A lot of women in my age bracket" - she's Gen-X - "should see this," Guilfoil says, "because it could happen to you."

During this week of performances she's been "so gratified" that so many women have approached her after performances and told her their own stories.

Guilfoil is concentrating on getting Body on stages, which will keep her out of other productions for the foreseeable future. (Bad news for the alternative audience that always welcomes her name in a theater program).

She and Bolan are starting work on another performance piece on the theme of drug and alcohol abuse.

Pier Group Theatre's puppet and mask socio/political fantasy You Don't Exist to Me was named Critics' Choice and gets a final performance at 5 p.m. today at Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival (719 Race St.)

That's especially appropriate because show creator Matt Johnson is a member of the festival acting company, as is Exist co-star Chris Guthrie. Elizabeth Harris is the third member of the Exist company.

It's great that two of the three top Fringe choices are Cincinnati artists. That absolutely speaks to the quality of the best alternative work being done here.

Producers' Choice is The Pursuit of Happiness by BlueForms Theatre of Columbus, which will play at 8 p.m. at Cincinnati Shakespeare.

That may solidify BlueForms' plan to make Cincinnati a regular tour stop. The company is already huddling with The Performance Gallery over a return visit.

Tickets $10. For reservations and information, call the festival box office at 381-2273.

Good opportunity

P. Ann Everson-Price was in the world premiere of Sing Hallelujah! at Playhouse in the Park in 1986 (and continued in the off-Broadway run at Village Gate). She had to turn down the current revival. When she got the call from co-creator and music director Donald Lawrence in February, she says, she was already booked through much of the show's run, which continues through June 27 in the Shelterhouse (box office: 421-3888). "But I already have my tickets!"

One of the things keeping Everson-Price busy is her debut CD, Killer Love.

"After 28 years as an entertainer and 18 years on the radio," it's time for her first solo recording, says the multiple Cammy winner.

Part of what took so long was "it's the first opportunity I've been given to be "and" not "or." The recording industry likes to peg you - gospel or jazz or R&B.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for me to be the real me," she says of the CD, which mixes covers of songs by Otis Redding, Janis Joplin and Al Jarreau to originals.

Everson-Price will star in Killer Love's release party at 6 p.m. today at Coconut Grove (18 E. Fifth St., Newport).

Tickets $15 at the door. A portion of proceeds will benefit the jazz program at School for Creative and Performing Arts.

For more information call J. Curve Records at 272-8004.

MFA finale

Playhouse in the Park's MFA Acting Company will complete its tour of duty with a performance of The Triumph of Love, playing June 3-12 in Marx Rehearsal Hall.

The six Ohio University students have spent the school year onstage in A Christmas Carol and Mister Roberts, understudied roles, performed on technical crews and toured with the theater's educational outreach program.

Triumph is a 17th century comedy of seduction and mistaken identity by Marivaux. Tickets: $10, $6 students. Reservations and information: 421-3888.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com