It is hard for anyone to come to Shakespeare’s work anew. His influence cascades from the lonely heights of great literature down to the crowded lowlands of pop culture. Theatre practitioners especially are aware of this when assaulting the cliff face of the Bard’s work. They know the climb is treacherous, the routes are well worn and worst of all, failure is public. And yet, like Everest, they make for the summit. Two intrepid explorers set out to scale A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Dallas: Kevin Moriarty’s production at the Dallas Theatre Center’s new space in the new Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre downtown, and Kyle Lemieux’s production at the University of Dallas’ tiny Margaret Johnson Theatre in Irving. I witnessed both attempts just days apart and am here Horatio-like to tell their tale.

Kevin Moriarty trims his text and streamlines his set to engage a younger generation. From the Auto-tuned opening strains of hip hop to the Keith Haring murals at the end, the production shed complexity for exuberant glee. Moriarty begins with a drab uninspired thrust stage and has first his faeries and later the audience decorate it with chalk. But the faeries’ graffiti was merely a uniform set of symbols. Even the audience’s doodles couldn’t break the spell of broad and bland. When given a crack at defacing the set, they mostly wrote their names or cute slogans. Here is Shakespeare for the masses. It’s Midsummer for your iBard, current and convenient. But just as music purists deride the MP3 for its audio compression, even some average patrons will buck at the loss of texture and sense that something is missing. The forest for the lack of trees?

If the Wyly is hosting Moriarty’s techno dance party, Kyle Lemieux is spinning old vinyl as Karl Haas on WRR. Records are longer and richer but come with clicks, pops and skips. Director Lemieux is so influenced by the text’s references to India that he dresses his fairies in Indian dance attire. So, in Irving the faeries wear baubles and bangles while the Wyly faeries wear bedazzled jeans borrowed from The Bangles. In any case, Lemieux’s approach is uneven. Where the fairies are now literally from India, the literally Athenian characters are wearing nonspecific modern attire. The India choice does allow for an exotic celebratory dance at the reuniting of Titania and Oberon. It is one of the more effective moments in his production. While back at the Wyly, Moriarty chooses boy band over Bollywood.

There comes a point when you have to compare their Bottoms. Moriarty has Chamblee Ferguson, a long time favorite of the area, and he lets him loose. Chamblee’s Bottom is so fabulously funny and bawdily bad as the bombastic blowhard that he re-creates the role. Lemieux has chosen a re-creation of a more radical sort by casting a female Bottom. The result is that Titania fondles a Bottom with an ass’ head and a woman’s body. There aren’t any other gender choices in the production and even the rest of the characters are unsure whether to refer to Bottom as a he or she. Jessica Fowler does well in the part but the director’s choice to cross cast her doesn’t yield any new insight on the play.

Near the summit of my mixed metaphorical mountain is “a tedious brief scene of Pyramus and his love Thisbe” which is meant to get laughs but always threatens to make the earlier portion of the evening stolid by comparison. Moriarty’s challenge is the greater having a greater Bottom. He is able to top Ferguson’s antics only by ending the show with a karoke party and bringing the audience on stage. Lemieux goes the opposite direction with a solemn blessing of the couples and cutting Puck’s last speech. Moriarty’s approach gives us a joyous climax but at the expense of the audience’s sense of community. We have to decide when it’s time to leave the party and are left to trickle out of the theatre as individuals. Lemieux misses the tailor made button for this ridiculous story, the excuse of all excuses, that this weak and idle theme was no more yielding than a dream.

The young lovers in both productions are full of feuding fun. Downtown, Abbey Siegworth distinguishes herself through her expressive voice and fluid handling of the text. In Irving, there was a particularly honest moment mid-fight when Hermia and Helena, played by Meredith Domalakes and Amanda Werley respectively, were just two girls comparing the burdens of love in hip-swayed, mall stalking fashion. In that moment, Shakespeare was hundreds of years old and perfectly present. It is moments like these that make the trouble worth the time to climb these lofty heights.

If you can catch both productions you will be rewarded, for the differences are just enough to make you want to read the play again. And in the end, isn’t that the point?

The University of Dallas’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through November 14 at the Margaret Jonsson Theater. For tickets, click here. The Dallas Theater Center production runs through November 22. Click here for ticket information.