English theater company travels with its theater

The company’s 41 actors and 21 musicians will perform five William Shakespeare works — “As You Like It,’’ “Julius Caesar,’’ “King Lear,’’ “Romeo and Juliet’’ and “The Winter’s Tale’’ — in repertory for 44 performances from July 6 to Aug. 14.

The traveling 975-seat, steel-framed replica of an Elizabethan-era three-level theater includes a stage that extends into the audience on three sides. The theater is incredibly intimate, with the furthest seat from the edge of the stage only 49 feet away.

“Even the person in the least expensive seat will be very, very close to the action in a way that I think is going to be very special,’’ said Nigel Redden, director of the Lincoln Center Festival. “You will really be able to focus on what the actors are doing.’’

A tour Friday of the massive undertaking revealed a buzzing construction site in which dozens of people rush to complete the three-week job. The unfinished stage still had directions scrawled across it for dozens of Shakespeare characters — some read “Out for Romeo’’ and “Out for Lear’’ — and on one pole was a sign, written in block letters on a sheet of paper torn from a notebook: “Don’t Forget to Put Brackets for Bookcases on Underside of Band Platform.’’

The RSC built the moveable theater and stage in its workshops and packed it up in 34 different 40-foot shipping containers — along with over 400 costumes, 15 beards, 350 pairs of boots and shoes, several cans of the Asian fruit lychee to stand in for eyeballs, and 40 liters of fake blood — for the trip to New York.

Alan Bartlett, the head of construction and technical design, said that overall the company shipped some 400 tons of material across the Atlantic, but the total cost was just $1 million since most of the workers who built the theater were already being paid by the company.