The players are the thing at Shakespeare-in-the-Park

While plays in repertory sometimes complement one another, the current pairing of “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Winter’s Tale” as this season’s Shakespeare in the Park offerings compares, respectively, a heavyweight and a lightweight in the Bard’s canon. All the better to show that fine actors can breathe fresh life into any tale (“Winter”) and next night, chameleon-like, strive to fill the shoes of those who’ve lit up the stage down the centuries in “The Merchant of Venice.” How rewarding it is that the Public’s first repertory offering in almost 40 years gives us the chance to bask in the glow of a troupe so brilliantly flexing the muscles of their craft.

Watching actors familiar from T.V. crime series and sitcoms, from film — and, of course, the stage — truly does double the pleasure — and, via some standout comic turns, more than doubles the fun. (Fabulous Hamish Linklater as the outlandish rogue pickpocket, Autolycus, in “Winter” who morphs into the penniless aristocratic young charmer, Bassanio, who wins the hand of Portia, heroine of “Merchant” comes first to mind).

Al Pacino redefines “Merchant’s” Shylock in a breathless, ranting, whining performance as a vitriolic Venetian money lender — essential to the business practices of the city, but resented and reviled by a populace who avenge their dependence on his services with virulent anti-Semitism — but he’s one of the very few performers appearing in only one play. While one respects the demands of his role it would surely have been a further mind boggler to see the actor put his mark on a minor role in “The Winter’s Tale.”