The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin

A landmark work of Australian theatre returns to the stage where it first sprang to inglorious life.  

steve j. spears’s The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin scandalised and mesmerised in equal measure when it premiered in 1976 – touring across the world and collecting awards everywhere it ventured. Now, on its 50th anniversary, Simon Burke takes on the towering role that Gordon Chater made infamous. 

Robert O’Brien is an elocution teacher whose career is going nowhere fast. Stuck in a dreary cycle of diaphragm exercises and She-Sells-Seashells, every evening he escapes into extravagant fantasies of seducing Mick Jagger. 

Then, a new student arrives. Benjamin Franklin. A 12-year-old acting prodigy with a stutter, a pack-a-day smoking habit and some unsettling curiosities about his middle-aged voice teacher. With half of Toorak already suspicious of their flamboyant neighbour, a ticking time bomb is lit. 

Directed by artistic director Declan Greene (Naturism, The Lewis Trilogy), this revival is a riotous, razor-edged tragicomedy and harrowing portrait of persecution. Half a century on, it’s just as urgent – and unsettling – as ever.

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