Free outdoor theater this summer in New York

You can head to Central Park to see Shakespeare in the Park's Twelfth Night in August, courtesy of the Public Theater. First, though, the Public is taking Shakespeare to you as its Mobile Unit travels through all five boroughs with a stripped-down and musicalized version of Shakespeare's war-of-the-sexes comedy Much Ado About Nothing, in which sparks fly between a pair of witty enemies who clearly have the hots for each other. This accessible Latin-flavored version, which incorporates some Spanish, represents the third straight Mobile Unit collaboration between director Rebecca Martinez and songwriter Julian Mesri; Nathan M. Ramsey and Keren Lugo play the squabbling wits. The tour begins at Astor Place (May 29–31) and Bryant Park (June 3–8) before wending its way through the rest of the city; 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 alfresco production of the Bard's historical tragedy, in which Roman senators bloodily veto a popular general after his leadership turns toward tyranny. Company founder Nicholas Martin-Smith directs a cast of 20 at the suitably neoclassical Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. 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.

Barefoot Shakespeare Company invites you to kick off your shoes and watch a pair of Shakespeare comedies performed by actors who have just a month to learn their parts and are structly forbidden from rehearsing with each other beforehand in any way. The company nicknames it "Shakespeare for Sports Fans," and errors are part of the fun; a referee calls foul for missed lines and cues, and the audience is invited to bet on who will perform the best. The Comedy of Errors bats first on May 31, followed by A Midsummer Night's Dream on July 7. Both performances are free at Central Park's Summit Rock.

A determined young woman doggedly pursues the uninterested object of her affections—whose hand in marriage she has been granted by a grateful king—in Shakespeare's rarely produced comedy, a romance so problematic that its title verges on sarcasm. Stephen Burdman directs this peripatetic production for his industrious New York Classical Theatre; the cast of eight includes Anique Clements as the dauntless Helena, Paul Deo Jr. as the heedless Bertram, Karel Heřmánek Jr. as the feckless Parolles and Nick Salamone and Carine Montbertran as well-intentioned nobles. The show kicks off in Central Park (June 3–22) before moving east to Carl Schurz Park (June 24–29) and south to Battery Park (July 1–6). Attendance is free, but reservations are suggested.

The populist classicists of Smith Street Stage go once more unto Brooklyn's Carroll Park, my friends, with Shakespeare's stirring history play, in which an untested but charismatic English king lays claim to a corner of France's vasty fields. Artistic Director Jonathan Hopkins helms this 15th-anniversary production, which stars a woman, McLean Peterson, in the title role. (If you think cross-gender casting goes against the spirit of Shakespeare, I have some very bad news for you!)

Despite its name, Shakespeare Downtown does not limit itself to Shakespearean works. This summer, it goes back to the Battery's Castle Clinton with a very rare staging of Tennessee Williams's 1978 play—adapted from his own screenplay for the 1956 film Baby Doll, which was itself inspired by a pair of one-acts he wrote ten years earlier. Like the movie, the play centers on the owner of a failing cotton gin in rural Mississippi, his teenage bride in a not-yet-consummated marriage, her dotty aunt and his principal rival in the cotton business. Geoffrey Horne directs the production, whose cast includes Billie Andersson, Juan Pablo Toro, Elizabeth Ruf and Saundra Jones.

The longevous Boomerang Theatre Company returns—as, true to its name, it is wont to do!—with a free Central Park staging of Shakespeare's lyrical portrait of the last Plantagenet king, a unfortunate weakling who gets sent to the Tower after making an unpopular land deal (setting off a splitting of heirs that eventually leads to the War of the Roses, as chronicled in Shakespeare's other history plays). Aimee Todoroff directs the production, which stars Broken Box Mime Theater's Tasha Milk in the title role. Performances are at 2pm on weekends, and tickets can be reserved in advance. 

For the middle show of its summer schedule, Hudson Classical Theater Company presents an outdoor production of Jane Austen's 1811 debut novel, in which sisters of meager fortune and markedly different temperaments seek husbands of suitable station. The adaptation is by the company's executive artistic director, Susane Lee, who has a penchant for 19th-century books. (She also adapted the company's suite of plays based on the adventure tales of Alexandre Dumas, père.) Attendance is free and reservations are not required.

Classical Theatre of Harlem's annual series of free outdoor performances in Marcus Garvey Park—also known as Uptown Shakespeare in the Park—presents an original neoclassical work by playwright Will Power and director Carl Cofield, who also collaborated on CTH's 2021 summer offering, the Richard III riff Seize the King. The play focuses on a figure who is often overlooked in tales of the Trojan War: the Ethiopian king and demigod Memnon—not to be confused with the Greek king Agamemnon—who led a large contingent in Troy's defense before falling to that notorious heel Achilles. Eric Berryman essays the title role, flanked by a cast that includes Andrea Patterson, Jesse J. Perez as Priam, David Darrow and Jesse Corbin. Tickets are free but reservations are strongly suggested.

The Drilling Company's beloved Shakespeare in the Parking Lot returns for its 30th season of free classical theater on the Lower East Side. This year's offering is a new account of the Bard's perennially popular forest farce, in which a bossy Bottom falls into a wild world of drugged-up fairy sex; the company last mounted this show in 2016. (Seating is provided for the first audience members to claim it, but spectators can also bring their own chairs.) 

Hip to Hip Theatre Company swivels from park to park in Queens, with outings to Jersey City and Southampton, to perform its annual diptych of Shakespeare plays in rep. This summer's offerings are the talky tragedy Hamlet, where a ghost and a prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat, and the magical romance The Tempest, in which an enisled sorcerer storms at the Neapolitan nobles who betrayed him. Consult Hip to Hip's website to see which production plays when and where.

After taking last summer off for renovations to the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Public Theater's cherished annual series Shakespeare in the Park returns with one of the Bard's most popular plays: an ever-popular comedy of cross-purposes, cross-dressing and cross-gartered socks. Resident director Saheem Ali (Buena Vista Social Club) directs a starry cast: Lupita Nyong’o and her brother Junior Nyong'o as Viola and Sebastian, nearly-identical siblings separated by a shipwreck; Sandra Oh as the mourning noblewoman who takes a shine to Viola when she is dressed as a boy; and Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Khris Davis, Bill Camp, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Moses Sumney as various figures in the lovely Olivia's orbit. Tickets are, as always, free; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details.

Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, An Enemy of the People and Hedda Gabler remain highly popular, and one gets occasional revivals of Ghosts, The Master Builder, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm and John Gabriel Borkman. But the master Norwegian dramatist's 1888 play The Lady from the Sea, written in between those great works, almost never surfaces these days. Hudson Classical Theater Company wraps up its summer season with fresh look at this rarity —the story of a woman torn between her doctor husband and her sailor ex-flame—as adapted by the company's own Susane Lee. (A fun fact about the play: Ibsen later brought back one of its minor figures, Hilda Wangel, as a main character in The Master Builder.)

The Public Theater's civically ambitious Public Works series, which collaborates with multiple New York communities to create large-scale theater, lost its leader when director Laurie Woolery fell victim to budget cuts at the Public last year. But the program soldiers on with songwriter-playwright Troy Anthony's new concert adapatation of one of Shakespeare's strangest plays: a kind of Ancient Mediterranean Flash Gordon adventure (often co-attributed to Elizabethan ne'er-do-well George Wilkins) that includes shipwrecks, contests to win a princess’s hand, a pirate abduction, a virgin in a brothel and a guest shot by the goddess Diana. Carl Cofield directs the production, which is performed at the impressive Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights in lieu of the usual Delacorte Theater, which is busy hosting Shakespeare in the Park this year. Casting of the principal roles—usually played by professional actors, leading an army of amateurs—has not yet been announced.