Shakespeare, Mozart, Puccini : STAGE REVIEWS : ‘Midsummer’ and ‘Lear’ Presented by Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Co.

The banner outside the Mark Taper Forum proclaims “King Lear A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” minus a connecting/separating preposition. “King Lear” is in block letters; “Midsummer” is in a more delicate cursive. Only the most uninitiated theatergoer could mistake this proclamation of the twin bill playing inside for the title of a single play. But the similarity of the sensibilities that have gone into shaping the much-awaited Renaissance Theatre Company’s “King Lear” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” might give one momentary pause.

There are ideas here: clear, direct, youthful, vigorous and unshaded. In both productions. Probably because both were staged by the same Wunderkind director, Kenneth Branagh (whose recent film redux of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” captured so many imaginations). The acting company reflects this brash young leader. It too is mostly young, inventive, talented and energetic. These qualities imbue the whole enterprise with an exuberance that best serves the farcical elements of “Midsummer”--those bumbling “rude mechanicals” rehearsing their silly play-within-the-play, the knock-down-drag-outs in the forest among the tortured young lovers, Bottom’s asinine dream, and a “bergomask” at the end that would make the most resistent among us crack a smile through the sheer power of send-up.

But where does all this buoyancy leave “King Lear”? Out on a limb. This is a forceful “Lear,” full of sound and fury, but with the heart carved out of it. The vision is brash, dark, sexually tainted and not terribly interesting. We get the trappings of drama here--reddish ground, clanging portals, shafts of unilateral light slicing the darkness--but not the tragedy.

The King, as played by Richard Briers (the Bottom of “Midsummer”), gives us an arrogant tyrant whose descent into insanity seems remarkably sane. Not even when Gloucester’s eyes are put out do we feel pained and revulsed--partly because Edward Jewesbury as Gloucester doesn’t feel it enough. But only partly. The scene itself is tamely done. There’s a neatness to the whole undertaking that lacks real blood and real sweat. The production comes in at a taut three hours, but cutting the Fool (played by Emma Thompson, Branagh’s wife) out of the Dover scenes is the wrong kind of streamlining.

A play is not a race to be won. And this is not to imply that “Lear” is being played that way. Or “Midsummer.” Both have a good idea of what they want to be and both offer some, if not enough, rewards. Branagh places both shows on the same set designed by Jenny Tiramani--a kind of astral nowhere, with stars and a moon cut out of the backdrop and a circular stage in front. The stage is covered in red pebbles, surrounded by an empty moat and ringed with an additional playing strip.

The set remains bare, which is at once challenging for the actors and practical for a touring production. There is one intrusive effect--”real” rain during one of the storm sequences in “Lear”--that smacks of unnecessary bravura. If you’re going to indulge in this sort of thing, you’d better be prepared to carry it through and for more than one scene. No one gets wet in this “rain.” It is the most overt example of the emphasis on externals that plagues both productions. Otherwise, the effects gap is largely filled by the skill of the actors, by Jon Linstrum’s lighting and Patrick Doyle’s original music (more sound than music and often, particularly when it comes to the fairy songs in “Midsummer,” jarringly dissonant).

On the tally sheet, “Midsummer” fares best, of course, by dint of its monkey business and fantastical lunacies, and because the play submits more easily to the superimposition of a contemporary vision. The vision won’t please everyone. Titania (Siobhan Redmond) and Oberon (Simon Roberts) are charmless, noxious spirits here, speaking in tortuous dialect-flavored English and done up in fairly lurid punk rockish costumes. (All costumes are designed by Tiramani in Early Nothing--a hodgepodge of different periods, “The Rocky Horror Show” and the far reaches of her singular imagination.)

Puck, played by Ethna Roddy (who delivers a tender and articulate Cordelia in the other play) is more Caliban than Puck and almost completely incomprehensible in what sounds like a thick Scottish brogue. This is not practical with American audiences who have trouble enough with the Queen’s English. “Midsummer’s” epilogue which follows an almost Noel Cowardish climax, becomes a curiously anticlimactic pagan rite. It is hard to escape the feeling of a playful, upbeat, enjoyable college production.

Branagh, it becomes abundantly clear, is an actor first, a good one, and an actor’s director. He loves their tricks and their imagination. His own Quince is seething understatement broadly stated. Briers’ Bottom is casual unrestraint. The lovers (Thompson, Max Gold, James Larkin and Francine Morgan) are bursting with peevishness and passion. They’re absurdly, comically intense.

What’s lacking all around is substance. Penetration. Subtlety. Branagh’s world is a place without nuance, a long drink of cold water: limpid, refreshing, healthy but without aftertaste. The productions are cool geysers. They explode, they don’t dig deep and don’t touch us deeply. For “Lear,” which is a muscular, clear reading of the play and fiercely acted on the surface, it means the absence of subtext or of the possibility of tragic dimension. It is a workmanlike, respectable, unboring, capable presentation, that never moves us. It cannot make up in energy what it lacks in maturity. It runs but it does not fly.

At the Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. “Midsummer” plays evenings Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Feb. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, March 1, 2 and 4; matinees Sunday, Feb. 3, 11, 17, 25 and March 3. “Lear” plays evenings Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Jan. 30, 31, Feb. 3, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28 and March 3; matinees Saturday, Feb. 4, 10, 18, 24 and March 4. Ends March 4. Tickets: $22-$28; (213) 410-1062, (714) 634-1300, TDD (213) 680-4017).