SPRING GREEN – For all of its many charms and inducements, the American Players Theatre has spectacularly succeeded at one essential thing. The company, now in its 32nd season, has made Shakespeare clear, compelling and accessible for two generations of theatergoers.

We'll never know how many thousands of people, convinced by boring classroom studies or bad stage productions that they didn't like Shakespeare, discovered here that the Bard actually speaks to them. Superlative speech and voice skills, a comprehensive understanding of the text, and a natural, unaffected acting style make that happen.

It is interesting to note that the same qualities that serve Shakespeare so well are also enhancing our appreciation of two very different 20th century classics here this summer. Noel Coward's comedy of manners, "Blithe Spirit," and Tennessee Williams' unnerving memory play, "The Glass Menagerie," are receiving heightened productions that bring us closer to these works than any other stagings of them I have seen.

Add to that a fascinating interpretation of "The Taming of the Shrew," and we can say that the APT is off to a marvelous start in its 2011 season.

The first 15 minutes of "Blithe Spirit" provide the quintessential APT experience. Two actors sharing the stage with only each other are so in sync, they spin pure gold. Not surprisingly, James DeVita and Colleen Madden are the duo here.

They play a very British upper class married couple awaiting guests they have invited to a seance. Party host Charles Condomine is a writer whose first wife died young. His interest in contacting the dead is purely professional, an attempt to gather authentic details for a book he is writing.

The couple is occasionally joined by an eager but clumsy maid, played with physically comic authenticity by Anne Thompson.

Madden is deliciously brittle, attractive but dangerously sharp edged. Sipping his martini, DeVita is confidently suave. One must think Coward would have loved the way they handle his clever dialogue.

Not only do the two actors possess impeccable timing, they speak with such precise clarity, every nugget of humor and cleverness in the repartee can be caught and enjoyed. I have a new appreciation for Coward's wit.

As the plot unfolds, Charles' first wife is accidentally conjured at the seance, and her spirit moves in with him and the second Mrs. Condomine. The cool Madden and DeVita establish strong contrasts with Deborah Staples' smoothly seductive first wife and Susan Sweeney's wonderfully wacky spiritual medium, Madame Arcati. APT producing artistic director David Frank staged this gem.

AT THE OTHER END of the dramatic spectrum, a richly detailed "The Glass Menagerie" is being mounted in the indoor Touchstone Theatre with vivid emotional results. The show was directed by Aaron Posner, who brilliantly staged his adaptation of "My Name is Asher Lev" at the Milwaukee Rep last fall, and he tilts "Menagerie" slightly away from the realistic presentation it uniformly receives.

In his director's notes, Posner writes that Tennessee Williams was interested in expressionistic production elements when he wrote "Menagerie," but the original Broadway staging ignored that approach and went for straight realism. Nearly all subsequent productions have followed that lead.

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