Last month there was high drama at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival — some of it offstage.

When a cracked support beam forced the closure of the Ashland, Ore., company's biggest indoor venue, the Bowmer Theatre, the OSF staff scrambled to relocate several rotating shows in a local college auditorium, the Ashland Armory and finally in a spacious show tent pitched in Lithia Park.

The fest, which attracts more than 100,000 patrons each year from the Pacific Northwest and beyond, met that logistical challenge with speed and ingenuity. And all's well that ends well: The repaired Bowmer is set to reopen for shows on Tuesday.

During my recent visit to Ashland, the Bowmer situation nearly upstaged the main event: OSF's new productions of classical and modern works.

As fellow drama critics from around the U.S. gathered in Ashland for the annual American Theatre Critics Association conference, I sampled a half-dozen of the season's 11 shows. They included a smashing romp through a vintage musical, some edgy modern-family dramas and several Shakespeare renditions of varied impact.

The latter were, overall, the weaker entries — disappointing, and, one fervently hopes, not a trend at a fest so well-equipped for the Bard's complex and rewarding canon.

Here are short takes on shows I saw. (I'll hold comment on "August: Osage County," which I attended in its first, technically rugged tent performance, other than to say that Tracy Letts' opus of dysfunction in three generations of an Arkansas clan was performed with gusto.)

Also on the boards:

"The Pirates of Penzance." The summer's hottest ticket is OSF artistic director Bill Rauch's richly entertaining outdoor staging of the familiar Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

The show, decked out in Deborah M. Dryden's colorful duds, is impeccably cast and shows OSF's resident acting company to great advantage.

Longtime member Michael Elich delights as a very Johnny Depp-ish Pirate King, while Eddie Lopez, as Frederic, a proper British lad raised on the high seas, and Khori Dastoor, as his trilling paramour Mabel, have the gleaming voices and well-tuned comic chops for their ingénue turns.

And it's no surprise that OSF veteran David Kelly, with all that Shakespeare versifying in his tool kit, can rip through the presto patter tune "The Modern Major-General's Song" with such alacrity.

G & S purists may shudder at the musical license taken by Rauch, who, in some cases to a fault, tends to vigorously update classics to make them more accessible. Here, the best of all G & S scores stays mostly intact and is adroitly conveyed by a live orchestra. But brief, punchy musical references to modern pop-music styles (doo-wop, gospel, Broadway show tunes) are also amusingly woven into many numbers as digressions or codas.

Mostly (jarring hip-hop bits aside) this works surprisingly well, with an 1879 score that itself spoofs musical styles of the Victorian era (grand opera, military marches). And it contributes to the infectious fun.

"Ghost Light." OSF commissioned this ambitious new drama, developed by Jonathan Moscone (based on his own experiences) and Berkeley Rep artistic head Tony Taccone.

Moscone's theatrical surrogate Jon (the terrific Christopher Liam Moore) is a sardonic gay stage director who is forced to come to terms with a loss that shattered his youth: the assassination of Moscone's real-life father, Mayor George Moscone.

As Jon prepares to direct "Hamlet," the parallels between Shakespeare's drama and his own experience overwhelm him. In dreams, and anxious talks with his close friend Louise (Robynn Rodriguez), he gradually unknots the trauma, and the later guilt and bitterness.

Jon also seeks "revenge," in the sense of bringing to light his dad's many achievements — long overshadowed by the other San Francisco politician murdered the same day, gay activist Harvey Milk.

Taccone's snappy, fierce and sometimes hilariously bitchy dialogue is reminiscent of Tony Kushner's plays. But "Ghost Light" isn't as taut or cogent in the dream sequences, where Jon is aided by a guardian-angel figure (Derrick Lee Weeden) and abused by a brutal vision of the paternal grandfather he never knew. There's a lot happening here, and more honing and focusing is in order (especially in Act 2).

"Ghost Light" may mean most to those of us who called San Francisco home on that dark day in 1979, when Moscone and Milk were killed. But Jon's witty, turbulent and compelling quest to make peace with a lost father resonates universally, too.

"Henry IV, Part Two." Lisa Peterson's outdoor mounting of the lesser-known half of "Henry IV" centers mostly on the making of Henry V.

Prized Seattle actor Michael Winters relishes his role as the errant knight Falstaff, etching a bittersweet portrait of an old rogue relishing his sack wine and debauchery, but who mourns the loss of a surrogate son: Prince Hal (appealing John Tufts), who quits his lowdown ways (and friends) en route to the throne.

Kimberly Scott adds pinches of welcome zest as tavern owner Mistress Quickly, and Nell Geisslinger is touching as Falstaff's strumpet squeeze, Doll.

Apart from an anachronistic preface that isn't very helpful, the production delivers the Bard's story cleanly and clearly, and is strikingly costumed by David Woolard.

"Julius Caesar." This bold, busy staging of a play about another political assassination, in ancient Rome, has won OSF some of its best reviews this season.

I hoped to get on board. But for me, director Amanda Dehnert's overheated, multiconcept-driven version was a misfire, a case of much flash and fury but not enough meaning.

From the banners in the New Theatre entryway marking other assassinated political leaders to the messy jumbling of acting styles and periods, Dehnert tosses in a slew of theatrical strokes.

Her Julius Caesar is a tough woman exec, played by Vilma Silva with steely authority. (OK, but why?) Acting styles clash when Brutus (Jonathan Haugen) intones the verse with standard Shakespearean flourishes, and his fellow conspirator Cassius (Gregory Linington) shouts it, in flatly American tones.

The Roman rabble tend to race around hysterically, causing a racket. Brutus' wife, Portia (Gina Daniels), is no stoic Roman, but a whiny and demanding spouse.

From moment to moment, there are interestingly offbeat, affecting ideas — like having Caesar's priestesslike ghost stalk and haunt the slayers, until they too are slain under the command of Mark Antony (Danforth Comins).

When the effects pile on, nearly obscuring the play's dramatic musculature, you want to call in an editor. Some of the essential, human dynamic behind the political headlines gets buried in gimmick here, when more trust in the timeless text was in order.

"Love's Labor's Lost." Shana Cooper's giddy take on this early Shakespeare comedy is a more consistent and coherent outing.

Cooper turns the farcical tale of a young king (Mark Bedard) and his buds, who break celibacy vows to woo a princess (Kate Hurster) and her posse, into an Archie and Veronica comic. Or is it a "Happy Days" episode?

Either way, the approach dumbs down a play that was never one of the Bard's best comedies. While Christal Weatherly's retro costuming is fun — those madras slacks and poofy pastel frocks — the gals come off like chirpy airheads, the guys like goofy preppies on spring break. And the side plots involving adults are dullsville.

Audiences, I must add, are lapping this up. But one can only hope there are more clever, original ways to make Shakespeare accessible to a new generation of theatergoers, and that OSF discovers them.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published July 30, 2011, was corrected July 31, 2011. A previous version of this story gave incorrect credits for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of "Henry IV, Part One" last season.