At Russell Street Theatre, Melbourne, Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC)
From June to 23 July 1994
Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 22 June 1994.
This review published in The Melbourne Times after 22 June 1994
The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin leaves one with a sense of overwhelming sadness. It traces the later career of a homosexual elocution teacher and his decline at the hands of the Australian prejudice in the 70's. The play should be called The Execution Robert O'Brien.
Bob Hornery is charming and tragic as the ageing transvestite and homosexual who runs The Shakespeare Speech and Drama School. The opening scenes are witty and warm, quirky and high camp. He prances about naked, sings along to Skyhooks, talks to his bust of Shakespeare and brushes his teeth. It feels intensely intimate to speak inside someone's life. We all have peculiar solitary habits and writer Steve J. Spears highlights these.
O'Brien closes the luxaflex venetian blinds in his Toorak flat and applies the Helena Rubenstein rouge and lippy and dons some appalling matronly gowns. His daily clandestine ritual is funny and poignant.
There may be only one actor, but Spears peoples the stage with characters: innumerable speech students with stammers, lisps, accents, and bad acting. Bruce, a transvestite stock broker, makes regular appearances escaping from his wife and spotty children into his fantasy world of drag with his friend, O'Brien. Apart from his confidante Shakespeare, Bruce is the only person who sticks by O'Brien through the dreadful trials which beset him.
The rigid morality of the time, and the high-handed attitude of the surrounding conservative Toorak society which comprised his neighbours and clients, are comic until they destroy the man. Their nasty voyeurism and accusations are counterpointed by O'Brien's concern and altruism. He is no pederast, and he advises Benjamin to try girls. "You might like them. They're soft - and they have breasts." His lust for schoolboys is strictly fantasy.
Spears script is a witty, detailed and deeply moving tale. The first two acts are a collage of swiftly shifting scenes with only the odd slow moment. At the start, many of the MTC audience tittered at the homosexual, transvestism and lewd references as if it were a drag show, but the stillness and profound pain of the final moments make this a bitter-sweet commentary on our treatment of "outsiders".
There is something of The Guildford Four in this story. While O'Brien is incarcerated, a bevy of supporters and legal eagles pursue justice for him outside, but this has no impact on his daily life.
This production, 20 years after the original, international hit starring Gordon Chater, has stood the test of time. Charm, wit and tragedy do not date.
By KATE HERBERT
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