The first time Marshall Mason directed his friend Lanford Wilson’s new work “Fifth of July,” he spun it for all its comedic potential.

“My first take on the play was that it was a sort of madcap comedy in the vein of ‘You Can’t Take It With You,’ ” the Tony-nominated director told me several weeks ago. “When we opened the play (in 1978), the critics, instead of thinking in those terms, started comparing it to (Anton Chekhov’s) ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed that, because it makes perfect sense if you think about it.”

Fast-forward a quarter-century later, with both plays in repertory at Arizona State University and Mason taking the helm for “The Cherry Orchard” as his professorial swan song: Both plays are delivered tight as a drum, played equally for message and humor, delivering a double shot of the same idea — that despite everything you do, life goes on.

Both plays deal with procrastination. In “Fifth of July” — a follow-up to “Talley’s Folly,” wonderfully rendered by Arizona Theatre Company last year — Kenneth Talley, Jr. is a young man who has come home from Vietnam with both legs shot off, replaced by prosthetic limbs. He deals with his new reality in all the usual ways: Emotional distance, humor and avoidance. Set some hundred years ago, “The Cherry Orchard” finds a Russian family about to lose its grand estate to debt in the wake of revolution. Chekhov lets his characters deal with it in the usual ways: Emotional distance, humor and avoidance.

Only while Ken, his family and friends numb themselves with drugs and drink, the Ranevsky household mourns its poverty with — what else? — a grand party.

It feels natural that these productions are playing on a university stage, for who knows more about procrastination than college students? And though the student acting across both plays can be at times wildly mixed, for the most part the characters are given generous treatment, with some stellar standouts in each.

By far the sexier production is “Fifth of July,” with its taboo sexuality, crazy drug use and bits of profanity. One might want to project some claim of prescience onto director Daniel Irvine for making us consider how Iraq War veterans and protestors might feel a good decade from now; in “Fifth,” Lanford documents the burnout, in-between years before hippies slid into yuppiedom.

Ken (played by Eric Piatkowski, a muted actor playing an aptly muted role) wasn’t supposed to go to war, his visiting friends say — he was supposed to dodge the draft like they did. Instead, he’s back in his tiny hometown sans legs, openly gay, pondering the sale of the decrepit Talley homestead and moving rather than dealing with the townsfolk chatter. His only project in town is trying to teach a brain-damaged boy to speak English again. “The gimp leading the gimp,” Ken says. “We lead a very cozy symposium.”

The play is haunted by aging mother Sally Talley (played by keen but slightly underused Equity actress Seelye Smith —thankfully, instead of a student playing “old lady” with greasepaint wrinkles), an eccentric who can’t seem to work up the gumption to spread her dead husband’s ashes. “I know,” she says. “I just don’t get things done.”

Around her, Ken’s friends and family — including an older-than-her-years niece, Shirley (wonderful Laura Bryant), who at 13 fake-smokes and swears she’s 21 and just might be the most mature person in the Talley house — wallow in self-absorption, snort coke up their noses and do tequila shots to obfuscate their reality.

“The Cherry Orchard” is a harder sell for audiences, though Mason’s direction makes its stilted antiquation infinitely more palatable. (Emily Mann’s translation is also more forgiving to contemporary ears, though neither Mann or Mason are dishing up “Chekhov for Dummies.”)

In many ways, “Orchard” is funnier than “Fifth of July,” with its hapless family so blatantly childish in its inability to face impending eviction. Comeuppance comes when Lopakhin (Jason Acton), the grandson of a former slave on the property, buys the orchard at auction and plans to transform it into summer cottages.

This play, too, is haunted by a kooky old figure — the senile Firs, played brilliantly by fellow retiring ASU professor David Vining. And there’s a minor character who makes a large comedic impression in this production: Neighbor and constant beggar Pishchik, played by ASU alum Jeffrey Middleton with commanding control.

“The Cherry Orchard” and “Fifth of July” both feature solid but modest set designs. “Orchard” outclasses with some fabulously faithful costumes — and irritates with an overeager stage curtain, but I digress. Together, the plays make for one of the best repertory experiences a Valley theatergoer could have. My only regret is that showtimes are spread too far out to make seeing both in one day impractical.

For such great, thought-provoking comedies, that’s a real tragedy.