Tom Hewitt
by G.W. Mercure
Spoiler alert: In the original Medea, by the Greek playwright Euripides, the jilted Medea murders her own children at the end. So, her femininity is a critical element of the narrative. Infanticide by a mother has a very particular impact. But Another Medea, written and directed by Aaron Mark and starring Tom Hewitt, is a one-man show.
“Well, that’s what’s so wonderful about this script,” says Hewitt. “Aaron Mark has done a really remarkable job in a very short time establishing deep and meaningful relationships. And so when the time comes, when the inevitable happens, it’s still so profoundly moving and terrifying and it’s really a tribute to Aaron’s script.”
Mark is a star writing for the stage, a rising one writing for the screen. His The Horror of Dolores Roach is a 2023 streaming hit for Amazon Prime Video. He wrote Another Medea for the stage in 2019 and has written and directed numerous original plays, including three one-person, off-Broadway horror shows.
“It’s basically about an actor [Marcus] who becomes obsessed with a doctor who’s incarcerated. And he’s going to be cast in the role of Medea,” says Hewitt. “So the dynamic, it’s really sort of interesting. I don’t have the vocabulary to talk about the social dynamics, but I believe it sort of touches on an almost heteronormative relationship that they have… So it is an interesting point.”
Hewitt is dynamic himself, which is necessary to be successful in roles that one might see a particular thread running through. He has been Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Sweeney Todd in Sweeney Todd; Scar in The Lion King; Hades in Anais Mitchell’s sensation Hadestown; Dracula; and Pontius Pilate.
“I love them,” he says. “I’m, I guess, sort of drawn to them in a way. I like the sort of moral ambiguity of these kinds of characters. You can be more interesting and complex. None of them really are arch or overwhelming, except Scar, nor overly malicious. They each have their own agenda, their own point of view, and it’s an interesting one. It’s usually interesting. I enjoy playing them.”
Hewitt is not typecast, although he assigns some of the phenomenon to being “creepy-looking,” which is debatable.
“You inhabit those roles by playing [the part] to try to get what you want and what you need from the other characters in the show and from the [staged] world in general,” he says.
He finds some sympathy with the villainous antagonist of The Lion King, for example: “For Scar, things are good for a while in the pride lands,” he says. “Let’s just kill everything, and things are good until it all breaks down and resources are destroyed,” he says with a laugh.
Of course, we are all the heroes of our own stories, even Hades. “He’s just trying to impress Persephone. It’s all for her. So that’s not a bad thing in his mind at all.”
A protagonist assigned to an underworld trying to be requited by a doomed love is not very far off from the narrative shared by Another Medea. And many others.
“A lot of Marcus’s motivations have to do with insecurity, personal insecurity, financial insecurity, you know, those are big motivating things for him.”
Indeed. And for the rest of you, just rattle your jewelry. What Hewitt finds inside himself that can be applied to these characters, to Scar and Marcus and Hades, is more accessible than one might think.
“First of all, here’s what I love: I love being on the stage,” he says. “Another Medea is the most naturalistic play I think I’ve ever done in terms of dialogue and sort of just naturally talking like we’re talking now—with ellipses and ‘f—k,’ and all that stuff. What can I bring, what qualities about myself? What energies can I bring to the stage that makes me other, that makes me a little bigger, larger than life? These are creatures that exist on a different plane, on a different level. And I love that: the physicality, the presentation. I love trying to explore what those things are.”
Hewitt, who first explored Provincetown during his morbidly successful run as Sweeney Todd, is known for film and television work and success in the aforementioned Broadway productions The Lion King, Jesus Christ Superstar, and The Rocky Horror Show, for which he earned a Tony Award nomination. He has also appeared in a production of Othello, and Peter Pan—in which he played, you guessed it, Captain Hook.
Ultimately, Hewitt says, audiences for Another Medea can expect “a really good story. You know, they can start to deal with a disturbed, disturbing play, just by the fact of that kind of parallel synergy. But it’s also such a fun ride. It’s like a symphony of swells and diminuendo. Even though I’m inhabiting this horrible story, there’s an absolute exhilaration, and it snowballs to the end. The audience, I believe, is really swept up in that story and taken for a really, really interesting ride.” He finishes with another reference to Greek myth. “Like riding as opposed to pushing that boulder up the hill. Just sort of riding the wave of the story and the script to the end.”
Another Medea is performed Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. and Sundays, 2 p.m., October 20 – 29 at Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St. (Season subscribers can redeem their seats for Another Medea, which replaces the previously announced production of The Gale, by calling 508.487.7487 or by stopping by the box office.) For tickets and information visit provincetowntheater.org.
