To enter Rikers Island isn’t easy. You need a gate pass, or an escort, to drive across the bridge from Hazen Street in Queens to the correctional complex. At the doors of each jail, there are metal detectors, full-height turnstiles and identification checks. A guard stamps your hand with an ultraviolet mark — should it not show up beneath the lamp when you are trying to leave, you can’t.

Next comes the Control Room: a blindingly lighted chamber, with a huge barred door that blocks your path. It eases open only when the matching door behind you has eased shut.

To enter stage left at Rikers is even more demanding. First of all, there was no stage when “Richard” was performed; instead, there was a playing space, 14 feet by 14 feet, taped off on a wood gymnasium floor. The acoustics were awful, what with the ceiling being three times as high as the basketball hoops and the fans oscillating at top speed in order to beat the heat. Distractions abounded: a telephone kept ringing in the corner; a guard kept walking by with jangling handcuffs and jingling keys.

Then there was the matter of the props.

“We have to be extra conscious, in a correctional facility, of what we’re bringing in,” said Amanda Dehnert, the director of the play. Weapons for the fight scenes, for example, were specially made of paper and rattan, as no metal was permitted. “We’re lucky that Shakespeare always says in his texts what the actors are carrying,” she said. “ ‘Here, I lend thee this sharp-pointed’ ” — or not-so-pointed — “ ‘sword.’ ”

The mobile unit was established by Joseph Papp, the founder of the Public Theater, but was out of service for nearly 40 years until it was revived last summer, Mr. Eustis said. This season’s tour is the longest and most ambitious yet. Stops include the Bedford Hills maximum-security women’s prison in Westchester County, the Fort Hamilton Army base in Brooklyn and the Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City, Queens. The tour will close with a three-week run at the Public Theater in downtown Manhattan.