Passion and persistence have paid off for rising actor Tom Matthews. Photo: Tom Matthews.
It will be a homecoming for Bell Shakespeare actor Tom Matthews when he treads the Playhouse boards as Tybalt in the upcoming production of Romeo & Juliet.
Family members and even old schoolmates will be in the audience when Peter Evans’ critically acclaimed production has its run at the Canberra Theatre Centre from 29 August to 7 September.
The 30-year-old former Trinity College and Canberra College student has worked hard to land his first defined role with the famed company, which also coincides with Tom appearing on TV screens across Australia in the long-running soap Home and Away.
Shakespeare and soap may be chalk and cheese, but that only highlights Tom’s versatility, born of a passion for the stage that started when he was a Canberra teenager and a willingness to broaden his experience through circus and educational theatre that took him around the country.
The key event in his path to becoming an actor came while studying drama in Year 11 when Canberra College took a group to Sydney for a Sydney Theatre Company show called Blood Wedding.
“That was the first time that I decided this is definitely what I want to do,” Tom said.
“I was like, I have to be on that stage at some point.”
It also helped to have a couple of teachers who inspired him to pursue his passion, like so many successful actors before him.
“It was really genuinely just those two drama teachers,” Tom said. “Having a good drama teacher is what pushes you forward to believe that you could make a career out of it.”
But success has not come easily. Tom failed to make drama school, opting for a general theatre and media course at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.
That only confirmed the stage as his first love, although he has set his sights on doing more TV and film, both of which can be more lucrative and regular work.
“The stage is where I’m happiest,” he said, saying it is a deeper and more rewarding process.
“In rehearsals, you get so much more time to explore with a team of people and play around and work out how it happens.
“Then once you’re actually performing, having an audience to feed off and work with, it’s kind of a thing that all actors say because it is so true, that there’s a relationship between the actor and the audience in theatre that you just don’t get in film and TV.
“That’s what I really thrive off.”
Romeo & Juliet will run at the Canberra Theatre Centre from 29 August to 7 September.
Basing himself in Sydney, Tom did what many young actors do – commercials, short films, whatever theatre experience he could get and, of course, survival jobs, like selling grease to mechanics.
He got involved in educational theatre, touring country towns across Australia, an experience that made a deep impression on him.
“Seeing the way that educational theatre affects some of these kids in remote towns who have never seen any theatre before, literally see their faces and see them watch you and what they can get out of it, it’s genuinely the most incredible feeling, and it feels really important to be a part of that.”
Another educational job with a company called Poetry in Action proved pivotal, providing a connection to Bell Shakespeare through its founder, Bryce Youngman.
In 2022, Tom joined Bell’s touring educational theatre company, The Players, again going on the road, but this time doing Shakespeare.
“Once I did the Players, I realised how important this particular company was and how much I loved doing this with this company,” he said.
“I just kind of stuck around like a barnacle.”
That persistence paid off with understudy roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which afforded him the opportunity to perform in Canberra last year.
But Tybalt will be the first role that he can make his own.
Tom’s portrayal of the usually hot-blooded Capulet will be more sympathetic in this production, viewing him as just as much a victim as anybody else in this tragedy.
He said Tybalt, just like his Montague rivals, was a young man with excess energy out to make his mark but unaware of the consequences of his actions.
“People have always been portrayed as just overtly aggressive, but we’ve delved into the script and I realised if the script was written from another point of view, he’s just one of the boys, similar to Romeo and Mercutio,” Tom said.
“He just happens to be in another family.”
This production also focused on Tybalt’s family ties and the love they have for each other.
“We really wanted to show that they are a close-knit family and they respect each other and they love each other, and try to bring out a little bit more of the softness of Tybalt and show that he’s just as much a part of this tragedy as everyone else.”
For Tom, the beauty and depth of Shakespeare’s language gives actors the space to develop their characters in a variety of ways.
He said interpreting the lines was like working out a puzzle.
“What are we saying here? How do we say it, and what does that mean for our characters? That’s why I think Shakespeare can be done so many times because you can always find new ways to do it,” Tom said.
Eventually, Tom believes he will head overseas to further his career, like many before him, but he remains passionate about the Australian arts scene.
He would always want to come back home and do as much work in Australia as he could.
The government could do a lot more to foster the arts and make it worthwhile for artists to work in Australia.
“Our industry needs artists here, and they need people to be passionate about our theatre and our film industry to really make it,” Tom said.
Bell Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet is at the Canberra Theatre from 29 August to 7 September 2025.
