As the Old Globe celebrates its 70th anniversary, the 2005 summer Shakespeare Festival presents the three plays that opened the theater’s inaugural season in 1935. The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth and The Winter’s Tale play in repertory through Oct. 2 on the Lowell Davies Festival Stage. Blood, ghosts, love and comedy: there’s something for everybody. Darko Tresnjak, returning as artistic director of the festival, will also direct The Comedy of Errors and The Winter’s Tale. Paul Mullins directs Macbeth.

The corrosive effects of ambition are perhaps never more clearly on display than in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the favorite villain of many a high school student. And how could they not love this play? Aside from great quotable lines, it has witches, ghosts, murder and lunacy – and it’s Shakespeare’s shortest play.

Macbeth is really a cautionary tale about sin and evil, personified by the Macbeths. The effects are not subtle. Macbeth, soon after committing the unspeakable crime of regicide, acknowledges that “full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife,” and realizes to his horror that his brain, and soon his body, will be food for them.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Three witches start the murderous ball rolling when they encounter Macbeth (Tom Hammond), Thane of Glamis and a lower-level player in the power game with his friend Banquo (J. Paul Boehmer) late one night. The weird sisters hail Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor and prophesize that he will be king of Scotland, but that Banquo’s heirs will rule in years to come.

Banquo thinks the weird sisters are a plant intended to push Macbeth into fulfilling the strange prophecy, but when word comes almost immediately that Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor, he begins to suspect divine intervention and to consider his future.

When Macbeth mentions the weird sisters to his wife in a letter, she immediately begins to make big and bloody plans. The arrival of King Duncan and his retinue, who intend to spend the night with the Macbeths, offers the perfect opportunity for nefarious deeds.

Director Paul Mullins takes a leaf from festival director Darko Tresnjak’s book on the staging of Macbeth. This production is full of dramatic stage pictures, including the use of stop action and slow motion, a revolving turntable and stunning lighting. Linda Cho’s costumes – especially the red diaphanous numbers worn by the witches – are sensational.

Despite the play’s title, this production belongs to Deirdre Lovejoy, whose cold, scheming, fearless Lady Macbeth is the epitome of ambition that has gone wrong and slipped into evil.

I hope Tom Hammond has found the line between suggestibility and weakness in his Macbeth portrayal by now. On opening night, Macbeth seemed more a pushover than a coiled spring waiting to be released. He improves in the second act, however, and goes mad quite magnificently.

This Macbeth has the best-staged banquet scene in memory, with Banquo’s ghost an ominous, creepy and too real presence.

The rest of the cast is fine, especially Michael A. Newcomer and Katie MacNichol as the Macduffs and J. Paul Boehmer as Banquo, alive and dead. And I mustn’t forget those red-garbed sisters, ably portrayed by Leah Zhang, Carolyn Stone and Melissa Condren.

If you like your characters evil, you can’t do much better than Macbeth.

Shakespeare’s silly side is on raucous display in The Comedy of Errors, one of the bard’s early plays. The plot, based on a comedy by the Roman Plautus, is a farce of mistaken identity in which two sets of twins separated shortly after birth end up in the same city, confounding townspeople and each other.

Set in Ephesus, director Darko Tresnjak updates the play to 1935 and chooses a film theme. The one-size-fits-all festival set is decorated with film posters for Morocco, Mata Hari and Bolero, and is festooned to suggest a Middle Eastern marketplace, with copper pots, rugs and colorful scarves dangling from balcony railings.

Here the elderly Egeon (Charles Janasz), a merchant from Syracuse, appears before Solinus (Michael A. Newcomer), duke of Ephesus, for sentencing. Egeon, in search of his long lost son, has broken a no-travel law; the penalty is death or a 1,000-mark fine. Solinus gives Egeon one more day to raise the money.

Here’s the backstory, told with puppets: Years ago, Egeon and his wife Emilia gave birth to twins. On the same day, a desperately poor woman also had twins. Lacking the means to raise them, the twins were taken by Egeon and Emilia to be servants to their children.

But a shipwreck separated both spouses and sets of twins. Each raised one set and never expected to see the others.

Now the Syracuse contingent – Antipholus and his servant, Dromio – have come to Ephesus, where the confusion – and the fun – begins.

Slapstick and other kinds of shtick abound: The Dromios look like Chaplin but act like, well, the Two Stooges; sets and costumes have a Hollywood look; and there is even a Bollywood musical number.

One of my favorite characters is Nell, the cook (Zura Young, padded to a hilarious extent), who much to Dromio’s dismay takes a shine to him. “She’s the kitchen wench and all grease,” he wails. “I know not what to do with her but make a lamp. She is spherical, like a globe.”

The Comedy of Errors is exactly that, and stuffed to the gills with silliness. This is not Will scaling poetic heights; this is the 16th-century equivalent of “I Love Lucy” in iambic pentameter. And, like Lucy, it’s difficult not to love it.

Shakespeare’s plays come in three flavors for me: those I love, those I like, and a few that I just don’t cotton to. The Winter’s Tale is in that last category, so be aware that my comments will be colored by the problems I have with old Will.

The Winter’s Tale works better if you remember that theater is about suspending disbelief. One character, in fact, states it thus: “It is required you do awake your faith.”

The admonition is well taken, because A Winter’s Tale requires the viewer to accept some outrageous and unmotivated actions. It also posits that only time and repentance are required to heal loony behavior. It’s an attractive idea – even the foundation of many a

religion – but these days evidence is scant.

The Winter’s Tale is an odd combination of tragedy, comedy and romance. Written after Cymbeline but before The Tempest, the plot has something for everyone (though, from my perspective, not enough for anyone).

The Globe’s wunderkind festival director Darko Tresnjak helms a splendid cast, including Bruce Turk (Leontes), Katie MacNichol (Hermione), Kandis Chappell (Paulina), Tom Hammond (Polixenes), Charles Janasz (Camillo) and Globe stalwart Jonathan McMurtry (Old Shepherd).

The white-robed Time (Edelen McWilliams) looks on from an upstage throne as Leontes, king of Sicilia, with no evidence and no provocation accuses his wife, Hermione, of adultery with his best friend, Polixenes, king of Bohemia. Even worse, he accuses Polixenes of fathering Hermione’s yet unborn baby.

Despite everyone’s protestations to the contrary, despite even the oracle’s declaration that Hermione and Polixenes are innocent, Leontes has Hermione imprisoned, denying their young son Mamillius access to her and even going so far as to ask his adviser Camillo to poison his former friend. When the baby is born, Leontes orders her abandoned on a remote island.

After Mamillius dies of a broken heart and Hermione is also reported dead, a complete geographical and tonal shift occurs. The second act takes place 16 years later in Polixenes’ pastoral Bohemia, complete with shepherds, simple peasants and a typical Shakespearean rogue, the thief Autolycus (Eva Zes).

McMurtry and company take over, delighting as always with a well-timed line, gesture or action. Autolycus sings in Kurt Weill fashion and moons the audience; a sheep-shearing festival offers delights like a blinding yellow teeter-totter, bright costumes and colorful pillows.

Despite Leontes, the baby has survived and grown into a beautiful young woman who just happens to one day to meet Florizel, Polixenes’ son (who has no idea she is a princess). A wedding ensues, Leontes is miraculously cured and Hermione is found to be quite alive (and willing to stay with Leontes).

Tresnjak has elected costumes of several time periods and an amusing bear. (This is the play with the famous direction, “Exit, pursued by bear.”) And he’s assembled a boffo cast.

If The Winter’s Tale is one of your favorites, hie thee down to the Old Globe and catch this one.

Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors and The Winter’s Tale play in repertory through Oct. 2 at the Old Globe Theatre’s Lowell Davies Festival Stage. For tickets, call