If there is one thing that Simon Burke wishes he could alter about his highly anticipated upcoming television miniseries, The Devil's Playground, it would be a scene that was left on the cutting room floor.
Anyone who has viewed the seminal 1976 film that inspired the new series would remember that Tom Allen, the 13-year-old protagonist played by a young Burke, had a bed wetting problem.
Fast forward 35 years and Tom is no longer a child struggling to reconcile his hormonal desires with his calling to the Catholic brotherhood. Tom is now a grown man with a family of his own. One night he wakes to find his daughter has wet her bed, and is crying. Although he is tightly wound and embroiled in serious matters, the compassion required at that sad moment acts as a circuit breaker.
"For just for one minute Tom goes, 'It's ok', and he does the dad thing, and changes the sheets. It was such a beautiful link to the movie," says Burke. "It had to go for whatever reason – it's so unbelievably painful to kill your darlings."
Ostensibly we're here at Gingerboy, having an Asian hawker style lunch, to talk about the much talked about "television event" Burke has produced, which is set in 1988. The production also stars Don Hany, Toni Collette and Jack Thompson, and Burke himself as a psychologist employed to counsel church leaders against the backdrop of a breaking clergy sex abuse scandal.
But we are also here to talk about the long and winding path Burke himself has taken since that first fateful feature film, as a 13-year-old boy under the direction of the Fred Schepisi.
His childhood growing up in inner Sydney seems like such a long time ago. His home in Darlinghurst was then multicultural and rough, now gentrified. His dad was a policeman, while mum did various secretarial jobs. Both were raised Catholic, but they were not practising by the time he was born. Burke was never even baptised, and yet somehow the major roles in his life have centred on religion.
The Devil's Playground was his big screen debut. His first major television performance was a classic work by Peter Kenna, A Hard God (which he also performed later on stage).
Then there was Brides of Christ, where Burke had one of the few male roles, alongside Russell Crowe: "It's so rare that we the men take a backseat in storytelling," he says. "It doesn't happen enough, but it's really important."
"It's odd," Burke muses. "I have appeared in some fairly landmark bits of Catholic screen history. It's as if somehow – for some reason – various parts throughout my life have checked in with the Catholicism deep within my DNA."
He was always interested in performing – religiously so. His start was a local theatre workshop but the first foray into real work came courtesy of a friend at primary school.
"He was one of those chubby kids who did commercials, and I was really jealous of him," he says. "I remember bribing him with some of my lunch – some biscuits or something – to give me the number of his agent."
Burke's parents told him to focus on school, but instead he rang the agent himself, and made an appointment. His infuriated folks allowed him to keep the meeting, and then came his first job.
"I remember flying to Melbourne when I was 10, to do an episode of Matlock Police. Oh man. I'd never been on a plane before. Staying in a hotel, the Chateau Commodore. It was the most exciting thing ever."
Two years later he was performing at the Belvoir St Theatre (then called the Nimrod Theatre Company), cast in a play with Robyn Nevin and Peter Carroll at 12.
"They were serious actors, and I had to play a pretty troubled juvenile kid who just swore all the time," he says. "It was fantastic. I got paid to say all this filthy language – reams of potty mouth."
Mere months later Schepisi and his wife were in Sydney looking for a lead for The Devil's Playground, and in a "right-place-right-time moment" they were introduced. He did a screen test, and an offer was made, requiring a leap of faith.
The film features full frontal nudity (both genders), but far more than that it takes an unflinching view of young male sexual awakening, and an even more controversial look at the repression in the Catholic brotherhood.
We pause to look at the menu and opt for a banquet. Salt and pepper chicken spare ribs with tamarind hot sauce hit the table first, followed by Szechuan spiced pulled pork with rice noodles. Wagyu beef with black pepper chilli sauce, roast pumpkin and snake beans is not far behind. Then a prik khing curry. We wash it down with a chardonnay from Chestnut Hill in Gippsland./p>
Burke remembers an eight week shoot in Victoria, living on a seminary in Werribee. Perhaps 100 boys were bussed in from Melbourne every day but when they left, Burke was the only child who stayed behind.
"I had not just the responsibility of carrying the movie, which I loved, but I got to hang out with the adults. On the weekends, Fred and Rhonda had this huge house in Albert Park, and all the actors stayed with them and they partied into the night."
"So of course it was a formative experience as a performer, but also as a human being – seeing what life may or may not be like."
He knew nothing about religion in the film. As for puberty, he was a late developer and so only knew about that part of life intellectually. Ignorance on both fronts was good for the innocence of his character.
Schepisi was able to put him at ease enough to perform the more challenging scenes. They didn't talk through the material in detail "which might have been creepy", but instead used humour.
"Fred's sensitive way of approaching the work was, 'Alright you little bastard, it's time for the wanking scene'. That disarming honesty – it made me relaxed, diffused the tension in the crew, and probably developed the sense of humour I have today."
You probably couldn't do that today. Burke would know. He is president of Actors Equity Australia, an honorary position he has held for 10 years – a period in which a number of high profile actors have been lured onto the board.
"Over time you learn that the only way you've got what you have today comes from people standing together," he says. "In my mind it's just something you've gotta do."
Another thing jobbing Australian actors have gotta do: guest appearances on the big shows of the day. Burke has done episodes of A Country Practice, Water Rats, All Saints, Blue Heelers, The Flying Doctors. The other thing he has done heaps of is Playschool, which he started doing in 1988. He hasn't shot an episode in a few years, but he is still on air. Burke borrows a line here from Noni Hazlehurst in saying that he learned more about acting from Playschool than any other job: "In terms of peeling back layers and being real, it really does teach you how to be yourself."
Around the same time, Burke took up singing. Although showing no prior aptitude for melody, he unexpectedly won the role of Marius in the grand local 1987 production of Les Miserables. He was soon doing eight shows a week. He had "chords of steel" by the end of the run, and musicals became a strength. Mary Poppins. Chicago. Phantom of the Opera in London. Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music. In November, he appears with Todd McKenney in the Production Company's La Cage Aux Folles.
Burke is thrilled with his new television revival of The Devil's Playground. The show is his idea, his production, and it feels well-crafted and purposeful. He dreamed up the idea of reprising Tom Allen three years ago.
"I've always felt there was some unfinished business with the character. And for people of a certain age – men in particular – Tom Allen's experience is emblematic of something universal."
He acknowledges that picking up a character from a piece of landmark cinema – 35 years later – was a "pretty outlandish idea." And yet the more people he discussed the concept with, the more lightbulbs went off.
He picked his moment well, too. The Royal Commission into clergy sexual abuse has given the project currency. Still, he also worries the project might affect the way the original movie is remembered. He asks me whether there was a whiff, suggestion or undercurrent – any hint at all – of clergy abuse in the original film? Having seen it with fresh eyes, I can safely say the answer is no. The film is about teen sexuality and the burden of abstinence.
"It's mostly about a kid who has this difficult question – the flesh or the soul – put to him at a ridiculously early age. But you talk to people who know film, and to a man they say it's about clergy sexual abuse. And they could not be more wrong."
Schepisi was the first person he went to see about the project. The intellectual property is his, and would require his permission. They have remained friends all these years, so he listened.
Burke made his pitch and stood feeling vulnerable – "because I'm always 13 again with Fred" – and received the blessing of the master to revive the character and continue (or conclude) his journey.
"Give me the boy and I'll show you the man," says Burke. "It reminds me of Seven Up. Those characteristics that you have as a child, they can make you better or define the disappointments in your life. That was the interesting part."
The bill, please
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