The Old Globe Theatre has this summer returned to the Shakespeare festival format of the 1960s and ’70s with three plays presented in repertory on the Lowell Davies festival stage. One set fits all, and serves for locales as diverse as France, Egypt, Rome and ancient Greece. The festival’s Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak directs Antony and Cleopatra and the seldom-performed The Two Noble Kinsmen. Associate Director Karen Carpenter directs As You Like It. The festival has run all summer long, but there’s still time to catch Shakespeare under the stars, as the festival runs through Oct. 3.

As You Like It has been delighting audiences for centuries, partly because there’s little you can do to ruin this staple of the repertoire. Its good-natured plot features two handsome princes, two enormously likable and intelligent women (one playing a man), a couple of shepherds, a clever court jester and a country wench known for her homeliness.

Needless to say, it’s all about love and the silly things lovers do. The theme (that love conquers all) begins to take form as the proceedings move from court to the Forest of Arden, setting up some of the secondary themes of court vs. country and nature vs. artifice. Ultimately, ruptured relationships are healed and four couples happily wed.

Set in more or less Victorian dress by costume designer Lewis Brown, this plays out on the neutral, dual-level set, designed for all three plays on the festival stage. It features a turntable in the center, more heavily used in the other plays. If the Forest of Arden looks a little strange – indicated onstage by three scrawny “trees” – remind yourself that this play is about love, not realism.

Katie MacNichol and Daniel Jay Shore are winning as Rosalind and Orlando, as are Edelen McWilliams and James Joseph O’Neil as Rosalind’s cousin Celia and Orlando’s brother Oliver. Touchstone (Gregor Paslawsky) sounds right though he looks a bit like a gondolier in a tutu, but his counterpart Audrey (Deborah Taylor) is suitably wench-like. And Charles Janasz’ Jaques is properly melancholy, providing a good foil for the optimistic lovers. Old Globe staple Jonathan McMurtry amuses as does Orlando’s old servant Adam.

This As You Like It, directed jauntily by Karen Carpenter, will leave you smiling.

Marc Antony and Cleopatra are two of the world’s legendary lovers. In Shakespeare’s version, Antony (Dan Snook) lives large but dies small. This great Roman general is a strange sort of anti-hero. We hear about his valor and honor – he even says, “If I lose my

honor, I lose myself” – yet we see him acting anything but honorably. He is portrayed by Shakespeare in his weakest, most vacillating moments, as he weighs what he knows he should do against his overpowering lust for the seductive Queen of Egypt.

Political intrigue demands Antony’s attention (the Roman triumvirate is threatened by the rebel Pompey, but his passion keeps him in Egypt until it is almost too late). He returns long enough to see Pompey (Brian Sgambati) jailed. Antony half-heartedly marries Octavius’ sister Octavia (Katie MacNichol) for political reasons and goes off to Athens on Empire business, whereupon Octavius (James Joseph O’Neil) starts his own march toward solo power by murdering Pompey, jailing the third triumvir Lepidus (Jonathan McMurtry), and speaking ill of Antony.

The furious Antony departs immediately for Alexandria, and the scene is set for the Octavius-Antony showdown.

Antony and Cleopatra is Shakespeare’s longest and most episodic play; the 42 scenes successfully move the plot towards its tragic conclusion. Antony and Cleopatra is difficult to stage not only because of its length and changes of locale, but also because much of it is talk rather than action. Even the battle sequences are mostly aborted because Antony turns back rather than engage. Director Darko Tresnjak makes it a bit more interesting by use of the mid-stage turntable, which adds some visual variety. It may be overused in this production (there’s no need for the meeting of the triumvirate to occur in 360-degree pan), but works well in one staged battle scene, accompanied by red light.

Tresnjak, who directed 2002’s spectacular Pericles, is a master of stage pictures, and this production is more evidence. Linda Cho’s costumes, especially those for Sara Surrey as Cleopatra – mostly white, flowing and low-cut – are nothing short of fabulous.

And the character is just as intriguing. Cleopatra may be a conniving seductress, but at least she makes no claims otherwise. She lives and dies on her own terms.

Snook and Surrey are good here, though Antony is a bit disconcerting in the first scene, shirtless and with a microphone cord hanging down his back. Surrey looks so terrific in those costumes that I’m not sure it would matter if she couldn’t act (but she can, and very well). The rest of the cast is fine as well.

Antony and Cleopatra is not Shakespeare for beginners, but this is about as good a production as you will see.

Shakespeare’s last play, The Two Noble Kinsmen, is not entirely his but was written jointly with his protégé John Fletcher.

The locale shifts between the Athens and Thebes of ancient Greece, and opens with the marriage ceremony of Theseus and Hippolyta (in fact, this production opens with the first scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

It’s about – what else? – love, and its overpowering, destructive force. Based on Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale,” it tells of Theban cousins Arcite (Brian Sgambati) and Palamon (Graham Hamilton), who wind up together in an Athenian jail.

One day Hippolyta’s sister, Emilia (Karen Zippler), happens by with her maid, and it’s love at first sight for both prisoners, instantly made enemies by love.

While they’re busy figuring out how they can duel for Emilia’s hand (it doesn’t seem to occur to them that Emilia might want a say), the jailer’s scrawny daughter (Bree Elrod) falls under her own love spell. The object of her affection is Palamon.

Of course the plot eventually gets sorted out, though not entirely happily, and after threats of banishment and execution the jailer’s daughter’s descent into lunacy of the and a real confrontation between the cousins, leading to a surprising ending.

Darko Tresnjak directs this production, a first for the Globe, with a sure hand and a brown palette. As usual, he presents some lovely stage pictures – the Athenian women arguing the cousins’ punishment when both are found in the forbidden woods is especially effective, with Theseus down front, and the women ranged in a row onstage facing him (and the audience).

Sgambati and Hamilton are terrific as the indistinguishable cousins, particularly fun to watch as they scale the bars of their high but small prison cell. Zippler is likable as the girl who can’t make up her mind, and Elrod convincing, though her character seems to have wandered in from Hamlet.

Then there’s that turntable again, this time used for the Arcite-Palamon face-off.

In all three of these plays, the message is that love is thicker than blood, friendship or anything else in this universe. And what better time to think about that than summer?