Free arts and culture this week in NYC

Romeo and Juliet, the earliest of Shakespeare's major tragedies, is the timeless story of teenagers who, in rebellion against their disapproving parents, have sex and then die after scoring drugs from a local priest. This version is helmed by the Public’s associate artistic director, Saheem Ali, whose credits include last year's Twelfth Night in the Park as well as Broadway's Buena Vista Social Club. Daniel Bravo Hernández and Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens play the star-crossed lovers; the supporting cast includes Deirdre O'Connell, Francis Jue, LaChanze, Glenn Fleshler and Caleb Joshua Eberhardt. Tickets are free, as always; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details.

The industrious New York Classical Theatre devotes its latest summer season to the Bard's historical tragedy, in which Roman senators bloodily veto a popular general after his leadership turns toward tyranny. If you missed the Public Theater's controversial Trump-themed production in 2017, here's another chance to see the play, minus the orange Julius. Stephen Burdman directs this peripatetic staging; the cast of nine includes Oneika Phillips and Carine Montbertrand as the honorable Brutus and Cassius, Clay Storseth as the ambitious Caesar and Paul Deo Jr. as the Roman ear borrower Mark Antony. The show kicks off in Central Park (June 2–21) before moving east to Carl Schurz Park (June 23–28) and south to Battery Park (June 30–July 5). Attendance is free, but reservations are suggested and donations are welcome. 

You can head to Central Park to see the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park, or you can wait for the Public to come to you as its Mobile Unit travels through all five boroughs with a stripped-down version of Shakespeare's ardent comedy about the forest romps of an ousted duke, his cross-dressing daughter and her lovestruck swain. Emma Rosa Went directs a cast of 10. The tour begins at Astor Place (June 4–6) before wending its way through the rest of the city and concluding in Prospect Park (June 27, 28); a full schedule is on the Public's website.

Hudson Classical Theater Company begins its tripartate 2025 summer season at Riverside Park with a free production of Anton Chekhov's bitterly comic meditation on the wages of self-sacrifice. Company founder Nicholas Martin-Smith directs an open-air staging at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument.

Dueling Vanyas! As Hudson Classical Theater Company presents Uncle Vanya uptown at Riverside Park, Shakespeare Downtown takes on the same play at Battery Park's Castle Clinton. (Despite its name, the company does not limit itself to Shakespearean works.)  This version of Chekhov's bittersweet masterwork, directed and translated by Geoffrey Horne, stars Evan Olson as the life-thwarted title character and Billie Andersson, Juan Pablo Toro, Scarlett Strasberg and Timothy Nolan as romantically dissatisfied members of his extended family, each in their own way stuck in place.