Flynn De Marco and Veronica Oliver provide just enough travesty for Camille to succeed.

In his collected plays, Charles Ludlum’s Camille is subtitled “A Travesty on La Dame aux Camellias by Alexandre Dumas” (although Ludlum himself apparently preferred to call it “a tear-jerker”). “Travesty,” of course, is a wordplay, encompassing both the idea of ridiculous imitation and of cross dressing. Ludlum played the star-crossed courtesan, Marguerite Gautier, in the original 1973 production and made one of those indelible impressions that pass into stage legend.

Camille began what might be called Ludlum’s middle period. He was 30 years old and had become the creative center of a small, impoverished group of talented misfits in New York called The Theatrical Ridiculous Company.

I had wandered into a play from Ludlum’s first period pretty much by accident a few years earlier. It was playing in an extinct midtown movie theater on the West Side. The play went on for about six hypnotic hours. At least I found them hypnotic and so, I suppose, did most of the other dozen or so spectators. Only two or three walked out, and they might have been there for the sex, which was frequent but perhaps somewhat disappointing by 42nd Street standards, since the simulated copulation, fellatio and cunnilingus were inevitably accompanied by weird soliloquies, some improvised, some lifted from Shakespeare, all delivered in a broad Bronx accents. My most enduring memory is of an underwater ballet, done behind a blue scrim, that was absolutely interminable and got funnier the longer it went on.

In his middle period, Ludlum grew confident as a playwright. He became less experimental, in the sense of trying things out to see what might work, but no less original. And he created a series of camp classics that both define and transcend the genre.
Now, 14 years after his death from AIDS, Ludlum runs the risk of becoming canonical. There is a hardback edition of The Complete Plays and no doubt, even as I write this, doctoral theses are being submitted by the truckload. So it is worth remembering that even in his poshest phase, when he had a lease on the downstairs theater at One Sheridan Square, he was playing in a tiny room, with an acting company that consisted mostly of old friends. And the playbill, the last time I attended, was still only a single Xeroxed page.

All of which brings us to a local group of talented misfits — “misfits” in the highest sense of the word, of course, as in “those who march to their own drummers.” For Running With Scissors Company is currently mounting a thoroughly enjoyable revival of Camille at the A.R.K. Theater, one block below Elysian Fields Avenue.

In the year and a half of its existence, Running With Scissors has carved a niche for itself with shows that feature a camp take on pop culture. In previous outings — Texas Chainsaw 90210, The Scooby Witch Project and Gilligan’s Island Survivor — the fun arose from a loose, camp theatricality that hovered somewhere between party game, drag show and comedy skit. The scripts were not noteworthy in themselves; they were more like scenarios on which to hang scenes of engaging nonsense. By turning to Ludlum, co-directors Richard Read and Flynn De Marco have given this engaging nonsense a firmer footing. Camille is witty, mischievous, and literate, in addition to being outrageous and funny. It is also oddly moving, I suppose because the stage world, bizarre as it is, has a great deal of life and because the old tear-jerker is still there somewhere, intact beneath all the absurdity and mockery and violation.

De Marco gives us a stunning Marguerite, a heroine with an exquisite sensibility, a belle poitrine and only the occasional lapse into an exasperated baritone. Bob Edes is a sensational nanny. I don’t know if he’ll get best supporting actress at the next Big Easy Entertainment Awards, but he’s certainly a contender. Pete Callahan’s Armand is an adoring young swain who wears his heart on his sleeve and yet never gets cloying. Oh, and the way he treats that poor Marguerite in the gambling scene! (Breaks the poor girl’s heart. Not simply because of the way he acts, but because of the depth of feeling it would take to make him act so despicably, which she understands, you see, she understands!)

As Prudence Duvernoy, Dorian Rush is delightfully tart and a delightful tart. While Allyson Garro, Veronica Oliver, Jim Jeske, Jason Toupes and Kim Collins aptly round out the cast. Amanda Madden’s costumes are attractive, and Jim Jeske’s set is simple and serviceable.

As playwright Ludlum gains acceptance, I have a feeling we’ll see more and more of his work in conventional settings. Nothing wrong with that. But here’s a chance to see a production that smacks of the squalor and grandeur of the Master.