THEATER REVIEW : Shakespeare Festival Offers Comedy With Tragedy : * Look beyond uneven performances for pleasant surprises in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘The Lion in Winter.’

In its second year of operation, the plucky Santa Barbara Shakespeare Festival has established a solid beachhead in a highly saturated cultural market.

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In light of the formidable challenges involved even for established presenters (witness the recent Pasadena Playhouse exit from the Lobero Theatre), many a fledgling theater company would be hard-pressed to deliver a single production.

Yet to its credit, the festival has taken the plunge with two ambitious efforts now playing in repertory--Shakespeare’s problematic comedy “The Merchant of Venice,” and James Goldman’s anachronistic historical drama “The Lion in Winter.”

To be frank, there’s no mistaking these for professional caliber productions. Both reflect the uneven performances and limited resources that go with the territory in community theater.

But if you can look past the medieval cloaks accented with Doc Martens, there are enough pleasant surprises in both shows to make the time well spent.

Festival Artistic Director Sean O’Shea finds humor in all the right places in his staging of “The Merchant of Venice.” Bawdy entendres, lively exchanges and exuberant slapstick abound in this very dark comedy about ideals, loyalty and faith.

Angi Paul makes a feisty, engaging Portia, the heiress who handily deflects her campily unsuitable suitors, weds her true love (Justin Ward), and (disguised as a male doctor of law) saves the day at the trial of Antonio (a somewhat distracted George Williams).

The tone takes an appropriately darker turn in the courtroom when the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock (Bob Langenbucher) sues to extract his lethal pound of Antonio’s flesh.

Like most current-day apologist productions, Director O’Shea seeks to mitigate the “Merchant’s” inherent anti-Semitism. A deeply felt performance by Langenbucher articulates Shylock’s resentment for the racist mockery he receives from the citizens of Venice, and his rage over the loss of his daughter to a Gentile husband.

But even though Shakespeare accorded more humanity to Shylock than was customary in his time, the play’s construction stops far short of anything like true tolerance. In Shakespearean comedy, the happy norm always reasserts itself for the deserving protagonists, of which Shylock is clearly not one. His ultimate defeat and disgrace--forced to renounce his faith or forfeit his property--is the same kind of unredeemed retribution reserved for the truly villainous, like Don John in “Much Ado about Nothing.”

In contrast, Shakespeare let the brutal prejudice of his Gentiles go unpunished, and clearly had no qualms about a society in which Jews had no place--unless they were willing to convert.

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Where Shakespeare brought a somber cast to comedy, “The Lion in Winter” punctuates human tragedy with piercing wit. James Goldman’s play--one of the best-written in modern times--uses a fictionalized portrait of England’s Henry II to evoke the universal conflicts in families.

O’Shea’s courtyard set, with its generic arches and stairways, does double duty for Renaissance Venice and 1183 Chinon.

Enlivened by Goldman’s thoroughly contemporary dialogue, Henry (Larry Cross) and his tightly leashed Queen, Eleanor of Aquitane (Judith Olauson), wage a battle of intrigue over the ultimate successor to the throne.

Lashing out at each other’s weak spots without a trace of pity, these royal antagonists are direct forebears of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s” George and Martha.

In the play’s most accomplished performance, Olauson’s Eleanor flits magnificently between venom and passion.

But as Henry, Cross proves nowhere near her match--too much the amiable bon vivant, he shows little trace of the fierce warrior king that rose to dominate an Empire as great as Charlemagne’s. Cross is a lion with very little roar--more of a meow.

Nevertheless, Director Kathy Biesinger still manages to wrest a compelling, tightly paced production that’s ultimately more successful than “Merchant.”

David Morgan is a stellar supporting presence as the sullen, unkempt Prince John, and Sacha Denison is fragile and sad as Princess Alais, the political and sexual pawn in Henry and Eleanor’s cat-and-mouse games.

* WHAT: “The Merchant of Venice.”

* WHERE: Paseo Nuevo Center Stage Theater, at Chapala and De La Guerra streets in Santa Barbara.

* WHEN: Through July 1, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.

* COST: $12-$14.

* WHAT: “The Lion in Winter.”

* WHERE: Paseo Nuevo Center Stage Theater.

* WHEN: Through July 2, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m.

* COST: $12-$14.

* ETC.: For reservations or further information, call (800) 963-0408.