Shakespeare in the Park doesn’t have summer to itself anymore. Pretenders have popped up with all kinds of gimmicks: site-specific environments. Shows where the audience follows the cast as it moves about. Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.
And yet the Public Theater’s series continues to reign supreme—when you talk about outdoor theater in New York, it still means the Delacorte, in Central Park.
This season’s two offerings aren’t among Shakespeare’s masterpieces. But don’t think that’ll make it easier to score one of the free tickets.
The first show, “The Comedy of Errors,” is a zany romp featuring a crack squad of comic snipers led by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (TV’s “Modern Family”) and Hamish Linklater (“Seminar”).
Ferguson is a Delacorte regular by now, having appeared in four shows there, and he brought up the idea of doing “The Comedy of Errors.”
“I had done a regional production in 2000, and it’s such an accessible play,” he tells The Post. “It’s a great opportunity for clowning and physical comedy.”
He was also keen to reunite with Linklater, with whom he appeared in 2010’s “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Winter’s Tale.”
“He’s a master at Shakespeare, and I wanted to surround myself with people who know what they’re doing,” Ferguson says, laughing.
Each of the stars plays a set of identical twins, and the confusion they create is the play’s comic engine. One of the many consequences is that Ferguson’s character, Dromio, gets beaten up. A lot.
“We’re trying to find different ways to make it funny,” the actor says, “so it’s not just me getting plowed for half the show.”
As Linklater’s wife, Adriana, Emily Bergl (“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”) also gets to explore her physical side.
“I’m doing a backflip,” she says. “I’m being dragged across the stage by Hamish. When you’re an ingénue onstage, you mostly get slapped a lot. I spent my 20s learning to get slapped. Now I’m doing it, which is great.”
The second production, opening later this summer, is a musical adaptation of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” that reunites the “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” team of director AlexTimbers and composer Michael Friedman.
For the latter, the challenge wasn’t so much to set Shakespeare to music as to explore different feelings in music.
“This is the first I’ve ever written love songs,” Friedman says. “Historically, I mostly write breakup songs. But just as people are always starving for comedy, there’s a need for romance that feels real and authentic.”
Cast member Rebecca Naomi Jones (currently starring in the sexy off-Broadway tuner “Murder Ballad”) has faith Friedman can pull it off.
“He has this crazy ability to craft something that’s quirky and funny,” Jones says, “but also beautiful, melodically pleasing.”
She plays the country maid Jaquenetta — “every show I’m in, I’m the saucy wench!” Jones exclaims.
Friedman thought the part was “spectacularly underwritten” by Shakespeare, so he gave her a really big song.
“It’s incredibly not kosher what we’ve been doing,” he says. “But it’s all been done with a lot of love both for the play and for the park.”
“The Comedy of Errors” starts previews May 28 for a June 18 opening; “Love’s Labour’s Lost” starts previews July 23 for an Aug. 12 opening. Info: shakespeareinthepark.org.