How does “camp” function in The Mystery of Irma Vep? Charles Ludlam’s play is full of drag, excess, theatrical artifice, and comic transformation, but camp is never only style. Seen from the present, Irma Vep asks new questions about gender performance, theatrical instability, and what camp continues to make possible. As camp has shifted since the 1980s, so too have the critical frameworks audiences bring to a work like this one. What does Ludlam’s play reveal now, and what does it ask us to notice differently?