The typical Fringe offering is either a musical made from an unlikely topic – add an exclamation point for extra zaniness – or the theatrical equivalent of a mash-up: A Bush twin floats in outer space, say, or the Kansas School Board has to compete on “Survivor.” (That’ll teach ’em natural selection.) But another time-honored tactic, adapting an existing classic, has been popping up more and more of late.

In a world of off-Broadway fixtures like “The Donkey Show,” doing a loopy version of a chestnut doesn’t seem all that Fringe-y. But no one can deny that adaptations are good business. The sort of viewer who likes to binge at the Fringe will probably get inside jokes about Strindberg, and nothing makes your show pop out of the 180-show lineup like some name recognition.

So in three shows, Kafka’s “Amerika,” “F–ing Ibsen Takes Time,” and “Seduction” (a gay interpretation of “La Ronde”), the five-year-old Fringe tries to play with some classics without breaking them. In most cases, the festival leaves some very sticky fingerprints.

Getting the most buzz has been “Seduction,” which at its opening at the Players Club had a line stretching around the block. Sure, the Club is right on a corner, but the attendance still seemed impressive.

One surefire way to get keisters in seats: Put the words “Warning – male nudity” on all your publicity materials. Here, at least, it seemed that Schnitzler’s name was selling fewer tickets than the backside view of one of the stars on their poster. Sadly, the show doesn’t measure up to its packaging. Once Jack Heifner’s adaptation is in full, if you’ll pardon the term, swing, backside views are only the half of it.

The London cast, six men ready to shimmy out of boxers, briefs, sailor suits, and thongs, spend as much time out of their clothes as in them. Just as in Schnitzler’s classic of Austrian pleasure seeking, “Seduction” daisy-chains from couple to couple in a series of interlocking scenes. Mr. Heifner (writer of “Vanities,” but doing a bare minimum here), changes the characters from the Viennese to a gay smorgasbord: A rent boy propositions a sailor, then the sailor shtups a handyman, then the handyman – you get the idea.

“Seduction” means to show us the many ways men get each other into bed. There are power plays aplenty, opera on CD, and occasionally borderline coercion. But even all that sexual variety starts to feel limp after the first four scenes. The cast either plays too broadly (Phil Price as the Teenager short-circuits the show’s one chance at real grit), or practically deadpans.

Slinking moodily about in his belly baring sailor’s whites, Gareth Watkins sets the show’s monotone early. Awash in graphic, vulgar activity, each seduction occurs in a haze of boredom. Whether the sex we see is betrayal or a fantasy realized, not one of the actors seems to really care.

Happily, in one of the most far-flung of the Fringe venues, another adaptation offers “Seduction” stiff competition. At the Mazer Theater, an easygoing riff on Franz Kafka’s novel “Amerika” perfectly blends reverence and glee, taking neither itself, nor the depressed author of the book, too seriously.

Alexander Poe’s script tosses in “Metamorphosis” references for flavoring and places Franz himself (Ben Correale) in the central role. With a charismatic snake-oil salesman Zoltan (Noah Bean) goading him along, little homebody Franz makes the American dream seem more like an acid flashback.

“Amerika,” for all its insane imagery and inherent theatricality, isn’t an easy work to tackle, as seen earlier this year at the American Repertory Theatre. There, an overwhelmed Dominique Serrand melted before the Czech sense of humorous despair – and high-budget projections couldn’t save the day. Mr. Poe and his co-director, Joseph Varca, manage to do the novel proud with little more than an overhead projector and a crack cast.

Finally, in a year with not one but two Ibsen spectaculars, one can at least be ruled out. “F–ing Ibsen Takes Time” pretends that the key figures from “Hedda Gabler,” “Ghosts,” and “A Doll’s House” all share the same drawing room. This is not a hilarious concept. Other than the single good joke – Hedda viciously hunts down and kills the “Wild Duck” to avenge her good friend Hedwig – the rest of our time is spent trying to remember the difference between a Solness and a Tesman.

Even those who get a charge out of Ibsen will find Erick Herrscher’s play unnecessary and irritating – those who aren’t quite so cozy with the Norwegian Bard will probably implode. Worst of all, director Benjamin Mosse seems to have never rehearsed all his actors together in one room. Certainly they were cracking each other up, dragging out a long experience into interminability. It’s nice that they were amused, but the rest of us were yearning for that most popular of Ibsenite endings: the mercy killing.

“Amerika” will be performed again August 20 & 25; “F–ing Ibsen Takes Time” on August 20, 21, 23 & 26; “Seduction” on August 19, 20 & 21 (212-279-4488).