So, Robert hides his identity to keep his job, teaching students in his home how to overcome their stutters and stammers. In one lesson, he says: “Tong tong tong a tong tong. That is the rhythm of the elephant’s song.”<\/p>\n
![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/329507295efe3861d718dbcc56b08a48.jpeg\")
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“Whether it’s Play School or Benjamin Franklin or Moulin Rouge, [acting is] all about truth,” Burke says. (Supplied: Griffin\/Brett Boardman)<\/p>\n
Filming a trailer for the play for Griffin Theatre Company, Burke recited the elocution exercise \u2014 and he couldn’t help but galumph around the room to the rhythm.<\/p>\n
“There were seven crew in the room and they went: ‘Play School’,” Burke says, with a laugh.<\/p>\n
“The whole thing about Play School is that it’s about being yourself and talking to one person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You’re not talking to a million four-year olds around Australia or a class of four-year-olds.<\/p>\n
“I do bring that to [the theatre].”<\/p>\n
What Play School teaches actors<\/p>\n
Burke is always flattered when he’s approached by people who remember watching him on Play School.<\/p>\n
“There’s a big difference between being recognised from telly, from a drama or Home and Away or something you’ve done, and being recognised by someone who grew up with you,” he says.<\/p>\n
“It’s a different relationship. A four-year-old doesn’t really distinguish between someone in the room and someone on television, and you see them every day.”<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/5f6127a2c6faebd2e825eeb49891ad8d.jpeg\")
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Burke with his Play School co-host Monica Trapaga in 1991. (Supplied: ABC TV)<\/p>\n
The show also offered him unexpected opportunities.<\/p>\n
Performing in Three Furies by Stephen Sewell, a cabaret about the artist Francis Bacon, in 2005, he became fed up with the rigorous approach of the director Jim Sharman.<\/p>\n
“He was pushing me and pushing me and pushing me,” Burke says. “I lost my shit one day, and I said, ‘If I’m that bad, why did you cast me?'”<\/p>\n
One reason was Play School. “[I love] the fact that a director like Jim Sharman would see Play School [and cast me],” Burke says.<\/p>\n
It’s not the only role where he’s found himself slipping into “pure Play School”.<\/p>\n
For two years, from 2021 to 2023, he played Harold Zidler, the owner and MC of Moulin Rouge in the musical.<\/p>\n
![\"On](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/76b91ad8aa67d14ea98ae24997fad108.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Burke told The Stage Show he played Harold Zidler for three years because “every single night was just a total joy”. (Supplied: Global Creatures\/Tim Carrafa)<\/p>\n
“I used to do a kangaroo hop sometimes,” he says. “I was so stupid.<\/p>\n
“But that’s the other thing: Play School encourages you to be stupid, to be like a dumb-dumb, and own that.”<\/p>\n
He reckons he was “famously” the worst host at craft, drawing clocks upside down for the camera that looked more like the paintings of Salvador Dali.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/f5b78be0783c0eb26431c8a299fdaad8.jpeg\")
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Burke with Play School co-host Noni Hazlehurst. He credits the show as helping him learn to think quickly on stage. (Supplied: ABC TV)<\/p>\n
“They would always give me the craft to do, because a four-year-old looks at that, and goes then, ‘Well, if [he] can do it, anyone can’,” he says.<\/p>\n
New challenges<\/p>\n
As an actor, Burke is always looking to pursue new challenges \u2014 like the craft elements of Play School.<\/p>\n
“At every stage of my life and my career, I’ve always tried to go one way, and then I like to go completely the other way and just do something I’ve never done before,” he says.<\/p>\n
The challenge of The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin is being entirely alone on stage for more than 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
The one-man show is a “tour de force” for an actor, Burke says. After its premiere in Sydney in 1976, it toured around Australia, to London and America, earning Off-Broadway awards for writer Steve J Spears, its star Gordon Chater and director Richard Wherrett.<\/p>\n
Forty-five years later, in 2020, Griffin artistic director Declan Greene \u2014 who Burke worked with in 2017, on Greene’s play The Homosexuals, or ‘Faggots’ \u2014 handed him the play to read.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/224700fd0bc407604e41e690569f06b0.jpeg\")
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Burke with Simon Corfield in The Homosexuals, or ‘Faggots’ in 2017. He’s effusive in his praise for its writer and his director on The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, Declan Greene. (Supplied: Griffin\/Brett Boardman)<\/p>\n
The director says he wanted Burke to play Robert because he has the right mix of skill and charisma.<\/p>\n
“The character can easily get the audience offside sometimes because of who he is and how he behaves and the things he says,” Greene says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But Simon is just so instantly lovable and funny and warm.”<\/p>\n
A year after receiving the play, Burke hosted an informal reading at his home. Performing as Robert he was immediately drawn to the “theatricality, bravado, campery and the command of language” in Spears’s work.<\/p>\n
“Then at the same time, you’re watching a person disintegrate,” he says.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s one of the greatest roles ever written, really.”<\/p>\n
But it took about six years for Greene and Burke to decide it was the right time to bring it to the stage \u2014 in its 50th anniversary year.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Burke took on Moulin Rouge! the Musical and the Wizard of Oz in Wicked, as well as The Inheritance, a play that transplants EM Forster’s 1910 novel Howard’s End to the queer community in today’s New York.<\/p>\n
![\"On](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/d907330eda3f61fccec3286d76582191.jpeg\")
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Burke saw Wicked in Sydney long before he joined the cast, and was struck by its “gripping” story. (Supplied: Jeff Busby)<\/p>\n
“I love going from a 2,000-seat theatre to an 80-seat theatre to a short film,” he says.<\/p>\n
The Inheritance, in which he played both Morgan, a kind of spiritual guide, and AIDS survivor Walter Poole, gave Burke the confidence to take on The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin.<\/p>\n
“One of the characters I played in that play [Walter] has a 20-minute monologue,” he says.<\/p>\n
It was good preparation for playing Robert. “One of the reasons why I did [The Inheritance] was getting my head around not getting sick of the sound of my voice,” Burke says.<\/p>\n
![\"On](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9a878f0211a27b02087ce4a27b569179.jpeg\")
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The Inheritance, starring Tom Rodgers and Simon Burke, ran for more than six hours over two parts and won three Sydney Theatre Awards including best ensemble. (Supplied: Phil Erbacher)<\/p>\n
Back to the beginning<\/p>\n
For Greene, the political climate of 2026 feels like the right time to revive The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin.<\/p>\n
![\"Declan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/a0b4ad69a1bc1242c1f0ca539f3e4ea5.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
When he first read The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin as a teenager, Greene thought: “I can’t believe you’re allowed to do this.” (Supplied: Griffin\/Brett Boardman)<\/p>\n
“We’re watching this emergent moral hysteria unfolding across the world,” he explains, pointing to threats made to libraries and performers over drag story time events<\/a> and the inflammatory opinions of American politician Marjorie Taylor Greene.<\/p>\n “The rise of this wild demonisation of queer people as just being inherently dangerous to children suddenly put this frame around this work I thought was really interesting.”<\/p>\n Staging The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin in the year of its 50th anniversary also coincides with Griffin temporarily moving into Belvoir St Theatre’s downstairs performing space, as redevelopment continues at its home in Kings Cross.<\/p>\n That brings the play back to the exact same stage where it premiered in 1976, then known as Nimrod Downstairs.<\/p>\n It also returns Burke to the theatre where he made his professional stage debut in Kookaburra in 1974, at just 13 years old.<\/p>\n “When I was 12 years old, Benjamin Franklin’s age, I auditioned for my first play there,” he recalls.<\/p>\n For the audition, the director, Wherrett \u2014 who later helmed the debut of The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin \u2014 handed Burke a page of swear words and asked him to read it.<\/p>\n “I thought to myself, ‘I know what this guy wants me to do. He just wants to see if I’m scared of these words’,” Burke told ABC Radio National’s now-defunct The Stage Show<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n