Premiering at Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre in 1976, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin returns to the city under Declan Greene’s direction at Belvoir St Theatre. Once a provocative critique of state-sanctioned homophobia, the play now serves as a powerful reminder, both an archive and a warning for the future.
Written by Steve J Spears, this one-man show follows Robert O’Brien, a cross-dressing elocution teacher in Sydney’s Double Bay. His flamboyance serves as both shield and armour against anticipated prejudice.
Greene’s production of The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin thrives on the intimacy of theatre. The set is crowded with shelves and carefully placed ornaments. As the narrative unfolds, the walls seem to lean in. For O’Brien, played Simon Burke, the sanctuary becomes a containment.
The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin review – quick links
Performance as survival
Burke’s performance is measured, blending high camp and quiet devastation. Nothing is wasted. For the most part, the pacing is careful and rhythmic, though some lines feel rushed, as if out of breath, which lends a sense of human urgency.
Emotional monotony is a risk in one-man shows such as this, but Burke never flattens O’Brien into a tragedy. Humour opens into fragility, flamboyance dissolves into stillness, and pain sharpens into fear. These tonal shifts are expertly handled and keep the emotional arc dynamic.
Burke makes unseen characters real. Through his monologue, neighbours and police begin to take shape, to the point where their invisibility goes almost unnoticed.
The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin is written as a solo performance, which highlights the isolation prejudice brings, but O’Brien’s perspective remains broad. His discussion of his wider world sketches out not just the community’s suspicion, but also the presence of authority and generational vulnerability.
When Burke removes his masculine layers, relief shows. He loves taking off the mask. Still, there’s a quiet longing. We witness the release, but not the celebration. An uninhibited moment of self-love would have deepened the tragedy.
Repetition, medication and emotional weight
Despite the confined stage, Burke varies his use of the domestic space, moving between desk, bookshelf, telephone and dressing area, carving different emotional domains within the apartment.
The lighting is one of the production’s strengths. At first, warm tones give the apartment a lived-in, private feel. As suspicion mounts, light sharpens and shadows stand straight. By O’Brien’s institutionalisation, the atmosphere is quietly clinical. The lighting has become interrogating.
Half a century on, this ending remains undeniably powerful. The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin draws attention not just to historical injustice, but also the deeper violence of prejudice. Institutionalisation, forced medication and moral panic are symptoms of something more insidious: hate, refusal and the inability to accept someone as they are.
The imprisonment O’Brien faces is not the only tragedy. It is that he is stripped of autonomy and self-expression. Sustained prejudice does not just wound. As suspicion grows and gossip becomes suppression, the destruction is both loud and clinical. The lack of acceptance dismantles a life.
Watching this today means facing an uncomfortable truth: the legal mechanisms of the 1970s may have shifted but the story is not over. The rhetoric evolves. The policing of gender expression persists in new forms, and the neighbour’s suspicion now has echoes in contemporary moral panics.
In showing a singular body on stage that is subject to intense, unfair scrutiny, this Griffin Theatre Company production of The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin does not feel old. Instead, it feels disturbingly close. And Greene’s staging decisions call the audience in as more than just witnesses because the lighting might speak to the state’s gaze but it also implicates the bystander. In this intimate revival, memory is not just history. It is a responsibility.
Griffin Theatre Company’s The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin plays at the Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney until 29 March.
This article is published as part of ArtsHub’s Creative Journalism Fellowship, an initiative supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
