Brian Lairer on WNYC, and we continue now to close out the show with our guide to summer culture for this pledge drive.

We're doing this at the end of the show every day because there's so much

good stuff coming up around here. Why not give you a little preview? Today the focus is on theater,

mostly the kind that happens outside in the parks, but there are a couple of picks that seem

worth venturing indoors to see, which we will include as well. And I'm joined for this by Jackson

McHenry, theater, TV, and

Film Critic for Vulture, the entertainment site at New York Magazine. Hey, Jackson, thanks for coming on.

Welcome to WMIC. Thanks for having me, Brian. Excited to talk about theater. So this year, there's an

absence in the list. We'll start with something that's not there because the Delacourt Theater is being

renovated. So the public's Shakespeare in the park is having to shift gears. Now there's going to be a

sort of wandering theater troupe making its way around the city? Yes, they're doing a sort of encore

version of their, what they call the mobile unit, which is a group that tours around various places and they have a sort of set schedule and it's still free Shakespeare.

And they're doing a bilingual comedy of errors that they've staged before.

It's a program they've done before, but in the absence of doing their sort of mainline Shakespeare in the park, there is all the more emphasis on this.

The public theater took the name Shakespeare in the park,

but there are other productions of Shakespeare happening in parks.

What are some of the other productions to catch?

The classical theater of Harlem does free Shakespeare productions in Marcus Garvey Park.

And so they are doing Midsummer Night's Dream later this summer.

There is the Hudson Classical Theater Company is doing plays in Riverside Park.

New York Classical Theater is doing Henry V.

So there are still options to see Shakespeare in parks, just not the sort of classic Shakespeare in the park.

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