Entertainment

Shakespeare in the parking lot

There’s one thing to be said about the Drilling Company’s “Hamlet”: You can’t beat the parking.

That’s one of the perks of Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot, a series of free productions performed in the Lower East Side parking lot at Ludlow and Broome streets.

Unlike Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, where it’s easy to forget you’re in the city, here it’s impossible. And that’s part of the fun.

Cars come and go during the show — the other night, one particularly rude driver pulled out right in the middle of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy.

Pedestrians taking a short cut are bemused, if not particularly alarmed, to pass a sword fight in progress. And one hapless passerby was shooed off a streetlamp that was part of the scenery, not to mention providing the lighting.

Considering all those distractions, director Hamilton Clancy’s bare-bones production — performed on a set that consists of little more than a tiny wooden platform resting on milk crates, a few benches and what looked like a shower curtain as a backdrop — is surprisingly effective, even if the performances are, to put it generously, uneven.

Alessandro Colla’s punk-like Hamlet is consistently arresting, if lacking in nuance. Making the most vivid impressions are the older, Equity actors: David Sitler’s chilly Claudius, Karla Hendrick’s regal Gertrude and Paul Guskin’s slightly daffy Polonius.

The costumes, culled from thrift shops and Army/Navy stores, include such fun touches as the ratty bathrobe Hamlet dons when feigning madness and the butterfly net brandished by Polonius.

The play’s running time has been pared down, although its intermissionless 2½ hours could have been cut even more. As for such amenities as refreshments and bathrooms — Starbucks and McDonald’s are just a block away.