Shakespeare in the Park is -- and no pun intended -- a New York theater lover’s midsummer night’s dream. This is the 50th anniversary year of the Public Theater’s Shakespeare productions in Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, which opened in 1962 with a version of The Merchant of Venice that starred George C. Scott as Shylock.

On the playbill this summer are the Shakespeare play As You Like It, and a classic of the American musical theater, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods.