Hamlet Comes to Needham Town Common
August 26, 2025
• A regional theater troupe will stage the Shakespearean tragedy outside on the common starting next weekend.
In the backyard of his childhood home, Michael Jay tucked a pair of shades into his shirt collar, a prop dagger at his hip, and launched into an instantly recognizable speech:
“To be, or not to be, that is the question,” he said before the cast and crew.
He’ll take up the same iconic speech before a crowd on the Town Common, where he’ll portray Hamlet in the Yorick Ensemble’s production of the Shakespeare play. It will be his first production in town since graduating from Needham High School in 2014.
“It is very, very much a homecoming,” Jay said during a rehearsal break Sunday. “I found my love for theater in the Needham Public Schools’ theater program and what is now Needham [Student] Theatre… I really love the feeling that this show is part of the Needham community, that it is very much baked into it.”
The Yorick Ensemble is a traveling theater group composed of members from across Massachusetts, including fellow Needhamite Ben Cantor-Adams, who is this show’s stage manager.
Cantor-Adams, a 2015 NHS graduate, also spoke highly of the town’s theater community and local interest in the arts, and he signaled a desire for more local cultural events.
Ten years since his last theater stint doing tech, he said his focus is now more so on building a network of friends.
“When I left [for college], I didn’t have a way to create community or to give back to community,” Cantor-Adams said, “and now I found it. I’ve come back to Needham, and I’m doing it.”
Josh Telepman, founder of the ensemble, said he hopes to provide a space for early-career professionals and actors to perform in more intimate settings and get a little “weird.” Yorick previously performed outdoors in Telepman’s hometown of Northborough in 2021.
When Jay suggested a production on the Common — inspired by the string lights surrounding the green — Telepman was on board.
“There’s something about outdoor theater that is just magic to me, especially Shakespeare,” Telepman said. “I feel like, to me, outdoors, for free, to the public is the way that Shakespeare should be.”
Audiences will congregate at both ends of the Town Common — most will be concentrated outside the Town Hall, while the minority audience will sit on the Great Plain Avenue side.
Staging Hamlet perhaps was inevitable for the troupe, whose name derives from the play itself — Yorick is the name of the deceased character whose skull Hamlet often holds during the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy.
As one of the grave diggers in the play, Telepman will actually handle Yorick, which feels like a “full-circle moment.”
“It’s no coincidence that when people hear Hamlet, they picture the skull,” he said. “I think if you name your company after Yorick, Hamlet is on the horizon, whether you like it or not.”
Companies often shy away from Hamlet because it’s intimidating, Jay said, but the time and place were key in their decision to produce it.
Shakespeare’s own writing can also intimidate potential readers and audience members, which the players know well. But Director Colton Chaney believes “Shakespeare done right will always resonate.” He referenced “The Lion King,” which is a reinterpretation of Hamlet, and said the emotion and intensity, can still play well in the modern day.
Chaney cut about 40% of the original show, condensing the story and its language to provide further accessibility to audiences — and also reduce the total runtime.
The play opens after the death of King Hamlet, who is poisoned by his brother Claudius who then marries the king’s wife Gertrude to become king. Prince Hamlet is “at the epicenter of all this chaos,” Chaney said, and must confront the conflict and violence surrounding him.
But what makes Shakespeare’s work truly special is its powerful and realistic dialogue between loved ones, Cantor-Adams said.
“Shakespeare, it’s about the plot, it’s about the tragedy, it’s about the language, and there is so much tenderness and truth and humor in the way that these characters actually talk to each other,” he said. “They feel like a real family.”
Jackson Rainey, who portrays Laertes, was first truly introduced to the Bard through the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, which birthed a love for decoding language and finding clues and meaning in the texts. This will be Rainey’ second stint in Hamlet, this time playing the vengeful brother of Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest who meets a tragic end.
As Rainey spoke with Needham Local during rehearsal, actor Nico Miller, as Ophelia, entered a state of madness, signaling one of many dark turns in the production. But Rainey was quick to point to the levity and humor sprinkled throughout the play.
“[There are jokes] right up to the very end, and it’s so close to the most tragic scene,” Rainey said. “It’s the simplest joke: ‘What’s his weapon?’ ‘Rapier and dagger’ ‘That’s two of his weapons, But well.’”
Whether for humor, romance, sword-fighting or classic ruminating Hamlet, attendees will find enjoyment, the cast said.
“Hamlet is the play. It is the archetypal play,” Jay said. “And we are bringing it here to you for no cost, and we hope we do it justice.”
The company will stage shows on Friday, Sept. 5 and Saturday, Sept. 6 around 6:30 p.m., weather-permitting. The following week, they’ll perform Sept. 11-13, also around 6:30 p.m. The shows are free, and attendees are encouraged to bring their own seating.
