PROVIDENCE — Multiple personas prevail in Painting/Eating, a duo of solos at Brown.

The third and final summer offering of the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium is a pair of one-woman shows, which are two of a kind: the creators are the performers, and the performers play many roles.

Both shows — The Kitchen Painting and You’re Eating God — are clever in creation and construction. And both are impressive in their presentation of myriad characters. But only one really holds up as a comprehensive play in which the characters are connected and the plot is focused: You’re Eating God.

The title of the piece by Rachel Caris comes from one of its lines, which one character delivers after seeing another character ravenously eat a pile of Eucharistic hosts. People do strange things when they’re hungry. And that’s inevitable after living four months in a 1960s backyard bomb shelter.

Caris’ play mocks the mentality of the Cold War, and satirically questions the conventions of Catholicism. And while there is social, political and religious commentary, at heart Eating serves up a character study, where the characters — mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother and grandfather — are all quirky from the start. And they get quirkier with every passing captive and stir-crazy day in the bomb shelter.

No, the Soviet Union didn’t drop the big one. The all-American family, under its father-knows-best leader, is just practicing. And the father cautions his daughter not to tell anyone.

“What will they think if we have to shoot them? We stockpiled a whole hell of a lot of Spam. But we don’t have enough for the whole damn block.”

Spam figures prominently and comically in the plot. The canned meat product not only provides the family with nutrients, but, after a steady diet of it, with fantasies.

In one memorable moment, the grandmother talks about some sexual encounter involving her, Clark Gable and Spam. And it’s actually not that shocking, given the actions of her hormonally active adolescent grandson, whose hands are always on his crotch or headed in that direction. (Explicit language makes this play inappropriate for children.)

The story centers around Peggy, a teenage girl who wants to get out of the bomb shelter and go to the prom. But her father doesn’t think that would be safe.

“It’s an American tradition, so it’s a target for a possible Soviet attack.”

Putting on glasses and a deep voice for the father, an apron and a delicate voice for the mother and a baseball cap for the son, Caris plays all the parts, and does so well. Characters and scenes are nicely punctuated with appropriate yet circumstantially campy music: the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” airs when the mute and invalid grandfather enters in a wheelchair, and Beethoven’s dramatic Fifth Symphony plays during a moment of high drama, which we won’t spoil by revealing, and certainly wouldn’t do for the cute, charming and literally uplifting ending.

The Kitchen Painting, created and performed by Zoe Chao, is a fine piece about a woman who wants an art museum guard to collaborate with her on a heist. However, there’s much more to this 45-minute work. And while the supplemental material is well performed, it’s digressive and distracting to the plot. All the other characters conveyed — artists, models, historians, docents and others who inhabit the art world — have no connection to the aspiring thieves and the central story.

However, as a vehicle for showcasing Chao’s acting range, Painting provides a full palette. But for a story, which has a nicely produced climax with flashlights and strobe lights and a quaint ending, the tangents and asides create a disconnect and a drag on the narrative, which is generally light and playful.

The woman who proposes the burglary to the guard does so after reading about thieves who robbed a museum in Europe, and takes pride in purloined art: “I can do better.”

The woman, however, admits to not having much experience in thievery. In fact, she admits to the guard that as a child, “I was diagnosed with cleptophobia. I actually feared stealing.”

Painting/Eating continues tonight and tomorrow, and July 30 and Aug. 2 at 8 p.m. in Stuart Theatre, 77 Waterman St. For tickets, $12, $10 for seniors and $5 for students, call (401) 863-2838, e-mail boxoffice@brown.edu, or visit www.brown.edu/btprep.

brourke@projo.com