THEATER REVIEWS : Exploring the Bard in Comedy, Tragedy : Companies give Shakespeare fans a look at two works that are not often performed by local amateur troupes.

Shakespeare fans find themselves particularly blessed this week. Not only are two companies performing the Bard’s works, but both are plays that Ventura County amateur theaters don’t do very often.

The Cal Lutheran University theater department this weekend concludes its two-week run of the comedy “Love’s Labours Lost,” and the Moorpark-based California Shakespeare Company has started a six-week run of “Julius Caesar.”

“Love’s Labours Lost” is one of Shakespeare’s less-popular comedies, but director Michael Arndt has polished up the strong points to keep it generally interesting to a modern audience. The premise is simple: no sooner do the King of Navarre and three young male members of his court commit themselves to three years of chastity and pursuit of scholarship than the Princess of France and three young female members of her court show up. High jinks ensue.

Director Arndt has, for reasons unclear, moved the story up to 1809, more than 200 years after it was written. Shakespeare had set the play in the past: By the time he wrote it, in the late 1500s, the kingdom of Navarre had been virtually absorbed into Spain and France.

Arndt has also moved his actors into the University’s Preus-Brandt Forum, a proscenium theater inside the Cal Lutheran library building. It’s a larger, much more comfortable space for cast and audience alike than its warehouse-like predecessor.

Amusing enough as a sendup of pedantry as well as young love, the play suffers in this production through uneven casting. Some of the actors in secondary and tertiary roles--notably Brian J. Harper as the clown Costard, Michael Morris as Constable Dull and Kelly Foran as a burlesque Spaniard--create interesting characters. But those playing the Navarre court (Sam Cooper, Craig Johnson, Joel Arnold and Rick Anderson) were virtually indistinguishable from one another in opening night’s performance; a little more color in their portrayals wouldn’t hurt.

Anybody who remembers Cal Lutheran’s fine production of “Twelfth Night” a few years ago, also directed by Arndt, will realize that “Love’s Labours Lost” isn’t top form. On the other hand, it’s far from awful, and a good opportunity to see something a little different.

A key scene in “Julius Caesar” comes about halfway through the play. Cassius, an envious schemer, has persuaded several local firebrands to help him assassinate the Roman emperor. Among the assassins is Caesar’s loyal friend, Brutus, whom Cassius has convinced that Caesar has grown too selfish, too powerful.

Brutus addresses the Roman public, explaining how he and his fellow assassins had Done the Right Thing--the phrase “moral equivalent of our founding fathers” isn’t Shakespeare’s, but it comes to mind. A persuasive fellow, Cassius has the crown cheering.

Caesar’s friend, Mark Antony, has asked to speak as well, and is given permission on the condition that he say nothing bad about the assassins. Antony’s address follows those orders with exquisite irony. “When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept,” declares Anthony. “Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man.” Several more of those venomous references to Brutus’ “honor” incite the rabble to fury against the killers.

Classified as a tragedy or a history, “Julius Caesar” is also very much a satire of politics, in Roman times, in Elizabethan times and right up through the present. It’s to the credit of California Shakespeare director William Fisher and his typically fine cast that the humorous elements of “Caesar” are brought out.

Vincent Wares plays Cassius as a very modern political figure; these days, he might be a presidential campaign adviser, afraid that his candidate is overstepping his authority. Anthony Liveri is Brutus--indeed honorable until his own power grows--and, very effectively, a comic cobbler. As Mark Antony, Steven K. Grabowsky grabs the friends, Romans and countrymen with a most stirring eulogy, developing the character as the play progresses.

As usual, this California Shakespeare Company production uses no stage set (nice costumes, though), all the better to focus attention on what remains consistently the best Shakespeare in Ventura County, and one of the area’s real treasures.

Details

* WHAT: Love’s Labours Lost.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. today through Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday.

* WHERE: Preus-Brandt Forum, Cal Lutheran University, 60 W. Olsen Road, Thousand Oaks.

* ETC: $5; free with CLU I.D. For reservations or more information, call 493-3151

* WHAT: Julius Caesar.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays; through Dec. 19.

* WHERE: California Shakespeare Company Theater, 6685 Princeton Ave., Moorpark.

* ETC: $12; $10 students and seniors. Several performances are already sold out, so reservations are recommended. For reservations or more information, call 498-3354 or 373-9243.