Portraying “camp” productions onstage is definitely an art, but there’s also a science to it. It’s very hard to make it look very easy. The scientific balances of what could be called “high” camp and “low” camp are playing simultaneously in the valley at two very different theatres. @rtists Theatre Project is a longtime purveyor of the “low” style of camp in their eclectic home at Soul Invictus. Following on the heels of their successful production of Charles Busch’s Psycho Beach Party, newbie Director James Asimenios is mounting Busch’s even wilder and more intricate creation, Die, Mommie, Die!. At the upscale digs of the Herberger Theatre’s black box space, iTheatre Collaborative, a company that offers amazing-but-regrettably-underattended works, Robert X. Planet and his henchpeople are offering a work that is just as full of camp as a Busch farce, but they are taking the “high” road in their performance. The two styles make for very different results, but both are excellent examples of how taking the “high” road and the “low” can still lead to the same destination (and we ain’t talking Scotland here).

Asimenios has moved into helming a group that is quite familiar with the concept of “low” camp. Bigger is better, and that attitude is reflected in his casting, his blocking, and the character work he expects from his actors. The flow of the piece is not too frenetic, which is a good thing for those who want to keep up with the twists. The actors’ movements are big, their facial expressions are broad, and their interactions are often performed facing forward, avoiding reality as much as possible. That’s good, because the plot involves the family intrigues of washed-up singer Angela (Terre Steed), her conniving producer husband Sol (Sandy Leon), their prudish but Electra-inspired daughter Edith (played alternately by Emily Smith and on the night I attended, Ashlee Poynter) and drug-addled homosexual son Lance (Matthew Harris), all under the watchful eye of Angela’s lover Tony Parker (Franc Gaxiola) and their maid Bootsie (Steven Bakos). Murder, betrayal, incest, and assumed identities abound.

However, the cast is a little unbalanced in their levels. The perfect balance is set by scene thief Steed, whose Angela is a highly strung diva. He plays directly to the audience, using his eyes, his face, even his whole body at times to present her. He also makes wonderful use of line presentation and pauses. He’s got this old girl down but good. As the other drag role, Bakos makes his small role quite funny, displaying similar talents to Steed. Ordinarily, Harris is donning true feminine beauty, but here he plays the crazed and effeminate Lance at perfect pitch. His best work often comes when he’s not the center of attention. He is always on, and the bits he has out of the spotlight are just as hilarious as those he does in it. The same cannot be said of Poynter. She is funny when she’s playing the shrew or lusting over her daddy, but her lack of reality isn’t quite the same as the broadness of the others, and when she’s not the center of attention, she tends to drop into non-character-like reveries. Gaxiola is on the same wavelength as Steed and Bakos, playing overt to over the footlights. He scores several laughs with his smarmy charm. Finally, Leon is lost as Sol. She does not seem comfortable onstage, and she drops character as often as she is required to get in and out of the obviously uncomfortable couch, the only flaw in Tom Handeyside’s otherwise impressively detailed set.

@Pro’s Die, Mommie, Die! is quite funny at spots, but it does run into problems during Angela’s unending reverie near the end of the second act. It’s all very important information, but how long can you play an acid trip and offer extensive exposition before it all becomes a – forgive the pun – drag? Steed does the best he can, and the trippy lighting helps, but few can be expected to keep up the dream for that long. This is a strong production that generally shows off the successes (and some of the pitfalls) of playing camp with an overt and unrestrained wink.

***

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the earnestness of playing camp straight. No matter what the absurdity, everything must be done without a stitch of acknowledgement and unshakeable gravitas. This is the tactic of Planet’s take on Maxwell Anderson’s delightfully implausible Bad Seed. Perhaps you’ve seen the 1950s movie, also based on William March’s novel. It isn’t important that you have, but it will set you up further for Planet’s joke. Just as at @Pro’s farce, boys will be girls, but there’s never a hint of self-awareness in this version, and that, in itself, is more than half the fun.

Bad Seed whisks you away to the Gulf Coast of Florida, where a precious little girl named Rhoda (Neil Cohen, probably fighting every fiber of his being after spending oh-so much time in the “low” camp camp) becomes the center of a murder investigation after a classmate is drowned during an end-of-the-year picnic. Her angelic mother Christine (Rosemary Close) simply can’t believe that her darling could be without a soul. Rhoda has hoodwinked others, too, including the nosey upstairs neighbor Monica (Paul Braun in what could be the best job ever of sincere crossdressing in the Valley). However, she hasn’t put one over on the crass apartment super Leroy (Greg Lutz), for he sees in her the same lack of a soul from which he suffers. Presenting the strongest case for Nature over Nurture, grisly details of Christine’s own childhood revealed by her reluctant dad (Rick Hendel) begin to shed light on how the title may describe several in the cast.

The tawdriness of the story and the silliness of its complications drive the action, not any complicity with the audience. Despite the fact that Rhoda is played by a man in his late 30s (and a known theatre critic at that!), the set is booby trapped with a collection of horror movie kitsch, and that Dale Smith’s soundtrack could very well have been pilfered from the Warner Bros. studio lot, the joke is that there is no joke being played here.

The original movie is quite stagy (though it did earn eight year-old Patty McCormack an Oscar nod), and little has been done by Planet to make it any more realistic. Even his Director’s Note is desperately earnest. The blocking, the pacing, and all of the stage pictures scream Well Made Play. Cohen channels an eight year-old girl, rather than playing at one, and he does so delightfully. Braun is so frighteningly good as the pseudo-pop-psychologist busybody that I had to look in the program to confirm it was, after all, being done in drag. Lutz is one of the few concessions to silliness, though this is not without its charm. His nasty Leroy is prone to talking under his breath, and while it’s impossible to believe that no one else but us can hear what he’s saying, it’s a good thing that we can. The scenes when Lutz and Cohen are matching wits are absolutely wonderful examples of why the “high” road is every bit as wonderful as those who pander their camp.

Close’s Christine also plays at deadly earnest, and she does have some wonderful moments where she reacts to actions and narration in just the way we’d expect, but where Cohen and Braun channel, Close still feels a bit pulled away from being fully invested in this oh-so-serious matter. It does not disrupt the play in any way, but it is a little like having Tippi Hedron in a role obviously written for Doris Day.

The supporting cast is even more uneven. Petey Swartz gives an insistently over-the-top performance in the one role for which this staging makes allowance, the decidedly déclassé mother of the drowned boy, Hortense. Swartz plays drunk, stays drunk, and is quite funny in her slobbering-then-slicing ways. Don Crosby is a jovial choice for the mystery writer that Christine approaches to learn more about her daughter, and Roxanne DeWinter is restrained and appropriately tight as the headmistress of Rhoda’s school. However, the periphery men that surround the leads are either toss-offs or play more like set dressing than even two dimensional characters.

Planet’s set, lighting, and costumes (for this is a one-stop shop here, with assistants to support) are all remarkably detailed, right down to Rhoda’s sweet little socks and the oversized deck of cards that look enormous in her hands as she plays solitaire.