Amanda Dillard and Lukas Raphael as Imaogen and Iachimo in “Cymbeline,” presented by The Drilling Company’s DShakespeare in the Parking Lot. Photo by Lee Wexler/Images for Innovation.
Forget Shakespeare in the Park. Save yourself some grief and give Shakespeare in the Parking Lot a chance. Shakespeare in the Park is free, and like most things that are free, it’s expensive—it simply imposes its costs on your time and patience rather than directly on your net worth. Not that you cannot buy a ticket for Shakespeare in the Park performances—you can, if you are willing to go through the charade of becoming a “donor” and chipping in $175 to the cause of subsidizing the summer entertainment of Upper West Side types and tourists visiting New York City. That $175 is just about the price of a medium-hot Broadway ticket, which I am sure is no coincidence. And what do you get? The Comedy of Errors set in the 1940s with swing dancing and music that may as well have come from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
A more honest approach to gratis Shakespeare al fresco can be found down on the Lower East Side, where the Drilling Company has for years been performing its low-budget takes on Shakespeare in a municipal parking lot—one that is in service during the shows. This year there was one heavy play, Richard III, and one more appropriate to the lighthearted open-air mode, Cymbeline.
Unlike Shakespeare in the
