So when I wish the Orphans success, I'm being about as sincere as Rhoda Penmark, the title character in Maxwell Anderson's 1954 play. (Not exactly a staple of community theater, Anderson's adaptation of William March's novel is better known through an overwrought film version.) At first glance, Rhoda is just another irritating eight-year-old, but it turns out she has a knack for getting rid of people she doesn't like. Her mother tries to ignore the evidence but finally faces up to the fact that Rhoda is about as innocent as O.J. Simpson, and a more convincing liar to boot.

Anderson's play, or at least the movie, was sympathetic toward the all-American suburban mom who discovers that no amount of child psychology can change a rotten kid. In his version, Landry has fun turning the mother into a Joan Crawford caricature (played with gusto by Charles Fineran). He also satisfies the audience's desire to see Rhoda behave more and more cruelly, an early example coming when she pouts that a school picnic was cut short simply because a classmate was found dead in a pond. Even when The Bad Seed is played straight, of course, almost everyone in the audience roots for Rhoda, and Landry's production makes the most of the character's perverse appeal.

But this Bad Seed doesn't completely trash the conventions of melodrama. In the midst of all the outrageous costumes and props that expose the most banal aspects of Anderson's play, there is one performance based on a serious reading of the somewhat absurd situation. Penny Champayne, playing the inebriated mother of one of Rhoda's victims, dispenses with the usual drag shtick -- no falsetto voice, no garish dress -- so that there will be no distraction from lines like "It's a pleasure to stay drunk when your little boy's been killed." Champayne almost dares the audience to laugh at her (at one point, she carefully pours liquor into a glass, then walks off with the decanter instead), all the while remaining fiercely protective of her character's dignity. I don't know that this performance would cause actual parents of murdered children to declare The Bad Seed free of bad taste, but I have to admire Landry, Champayne, and director James P. Byrne for preserving the most powerful aspect of the play without lessening the overall hilarity of this revisionist production.

The character of Rhoda Penmark is more in keeping with the Orphans tradition of over-the-top theatrics. She's played by Haylee Shrimpton, who, despite her suspicious name, has all the outward signs of being an actual young girl. In fact, she may be the first pigtailed child actress in history who doesn't cause most of the audience to wish they could murder her. She has fun with the character without ever upstaging her co-stars, and Landry's character might as well be talking about Shrimpton when she says that little Rhoda "makes other children look stupid and stodgy by comparison."

Landry plays Monica Breedlove, a nosy landlady with the most hilarious collection of caftans since Beatrice Arthur on TV's Maude. Other Orphans regulars include David Hanbury as Rhoda's proper (yet incessantly horny) teacher, Keith Orr as her criminologist grandfather, and Ricardo Rodriguez as her father, Ricky (who's away from home most of the time because he's the near-naked Indian in the disco group the Village People). Director Byrne, as a suspicious handyman, is both funny and eerily reminiscent of Henry Jones in the film.

Like Rhoda herself, and like Landry's theatrical company, The Bad Seed is clever, resourceful, and still a bit childish. It's never cute, though, and the show is definitely not for children, who might be frightened by the S&M garb, the snatches of Hitchcock-movie music, and the audio impersonation of poet Maya Angelou.

Landry has said that the Gold Dust Orphans may once again turn up in Boston -- it'll depend on how things work out in LA. No doubt a lot of people in the South End will be thinking evil thoughts as the troupe heads to California.