“We’re going to have a real live tomb,” the theater director said, “so be careful.”

Stephen Burdman was standing in a World Financial Center lobby, watching a group of actors rehearse the gravedigger scene from “Hamlet.” What worried him was the marble floor. To create the illusion of a grave, the crew was building a three-foot-high platform and if one of the actors fell from it, well, that would be painful.

Burdman is the artistic director of New York Classical Theatre, whose version of “Hamlet” will be staging 15 performances in the World Financial Center this month. Since 2000, the company has been putting on free productions of plays by Shakespeare, Molière and other pre-20th-century playwrights in Central Park and, recently, Battery Park. The World Financial Center is its first indoor venue. Except for the tomb, the complex itself, unadorned, will serve as the set, though the actors will don period costumes.

The company’s mission, as Burdman puts it, is to “create or reinvigorate audiences for the theater,” courting people who have never gone to the theater and wooing back those who have stopped going. Burdman is hoping for 400 guests a night during the play’s  run.

The show’s staging will reflect what Burdman refers to as the company’s “panoramic” approach, meaning that the action will unfold not just in front of the audience, but all around it. In addition, the audience will also follow Hamlet around the Winter Garden and over the Liberty Street footbridge to 1 World Financial Center as he plots revenge, contemplates the meaning of existence, and, eventually, goes mad.

For two weeks last month, the cast rehearsed on site, in full view of the public. Justin Blanchard, a slender and square-jawed Hamlet who recently made his Broadway debut in “Journey’s End,” recited his famous “to be or not to be” speech while Merrill Lynch workers filed by him.

“There are guys walking past with their briefcases and cell phones, talking to each other. It’s nice. I’ve begun to think of them as my servants in the castle.”

Indeed, some of the actors have taken to referring to the World Financial Center as “the castle of business,” and although Elsinore, the castle in which Shakespeare’s tragedy takes place, lacked the modern amenities known as escalators, it’s perhaps not so hard to imagine the home of Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers as a setting for a play about ruthless ambition and a kingdom’s downfall.

The architectural qualities of the World Financial Center, with its domed lobbies and echo-chamber hallways, were part of its appeal, said Burdman, who offered a tour of his “theater.”

Stopping on a balcony overlooking the palm trees of the Winter Garden, Burdman pointed to the sweeping staircase where, he noted, the audience “becomes the court of Denmark” as they watch Claudius’s coronation.

Then he ducked into a quiet area off a busy hallway (“the sort of apartment part of Elsinore”) and made his way down a nearby corridor. “This is where Ophelia’s ‘mad scene’ takes place,” he said. “She runs this way and the audience runs after her.”

“And here we have the finale,” Burdman announced, entering the lobby of 1 World Financial Center, “which is important because everyone dies here.” High above were a pair of balconies and, beyond, the marble floor stretched into the distance.

Gazing at them, Burdman nodded his head in approval. “You can see the majesty,” he said.

Performances of “Hamlet” take place April 1–3, April 6–11 and April 13–18, 7–9 p.m. For information, go to  artsworldfinancialcenter.com. Meet at Starbucks in the World Financial Center Courtyard. No tickets are required.