Simon Burke
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About the author:Australian leading man Simon Burke has built an enviable career in both his home country (where his credits range from
Les Miserables and
They’re Playing Our Song to
Falsettos and
The Wild Party) and in the UK (including leading roles in
The Phantom of the Opera, A Little Night Music and
Cabaret). Now he’s back on the London stage in one of musical theatre’s most romantic leading roles: Captain von Trapp in the hit production of
The Sound of Music at the London Palladium. Although it took almost 70 hours in the air (three flights between Sydney and London in a three-week period) to get the deal done, Burke is delighted to be starring opposite Connie Fisher in the beloved classic. He shared the story of his casting with Broadway.com.
So I’m sitting in my dressing room at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, Australia on the last day of the now infamous Kookaburra production of Company (you haven’t heard of this production? Just Google kookaburra + Sondheim + april + cuts for a mind-numbing fix of theatrical insanity). I’m with a couple of my fellow cast-members working out the usual clutch of childish final Saturday matinee practical jokes when I get the latest of several calls from my UK agent that have been coming thick and fast over the past 12 hours since 1AM (bloody time difference!).
Yes, it’s on—can I get on a plane to London tomorrow to audition for the role of Captain von Trapp in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of The Sound of Music? Can I what? Two more shows, too many drinks and 20 hours later I’m on the plane. I arrive Monday morning, see the show Monday evening, meet the creatives Tuesday, get offered the role Wednesday, fly back home Thursday, pack up my entire life—and 18 days later, I’m in the London Palladium for the first day of rehearsals.
I can’t say the call came completely out of the blue. During rehearsals for Company, I took five days off from being “Sorry - Grateful” to appear in An Evening With Jeremy Sams for the 2007 Adelaide Cabaret Festival with my old friend Philip Quast and Mr. Sams himself, whose amazing and varied career I had long admired but whom I had never met. We bonded immediately and had a great old time and did an even better concert. As I said my goodbyes, I stopped myself from saying “Jeez, I’d love to work with you again sometime” (never a good look from actor to director, I’ve found) when he took the words right out of my mouth (although I don’t think he, being quite posh, said “Jeez”). So I went back to Company with the vague feeling that our paths might one day cross again, never expecting that it would be 10 weeks later on the other side of the world in one of the biggest hits the West End has seen in years. Note to self: Never turn down a gig, even if it’s in the middle of another…
Week One was understandably through the haze of almost ridiculous jetlag—three 23-hour flights in three weeks will do that to you, thought I must admit there is something pretty cool about getting off a flight from Australia and being driven straight to rehearsals. I was secretly hoping the flight would be late so I could rush in, breathless and flustered, saying “Sorry, AIR traffic!” But it’s pretty clear from Day One that this is not going to be a run-of-the-mill cast change. Jeremy and his associate, the brilliant Anna Linstrum, promise true re-rehearsal and deep investigation, and for the whole four weeks of rehearsal they are true to their word. After all apart from Maria and the Mother Abbess, all the principals are new: Captain von Trapp, Max and Elsa, Liesl and Rolf.
Connie Fisher and Simon Burke
in The Sound of Music
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We’re encouraged from the very beginning to trust the text, which I’ll admit I found a little difficult at first, as on the page it seems from another world—not just 1930s Austria but 1960s Broadway. But it’s a trust exercise that pays off in spades, and very quickly I start to understand that Lindsay and Crouse have given the world perhaps the best book ever written for a musical, and given me a true gift of a role to play for the next 12 months.
Georg von Trapp’s journey—crap dad to good dad. But all through rehearsal, Jeremy and Anna are vigilant about making this journey as huge as the mountain he and his family must traverse at the end of the play. The colder, the more remote, the more humourless, the more forbidding, the worse father he is at the beginning, the more money in the bank you have for his transformation at the end. Similarly they encourage me to delay the Captain’s realization that he’s in love with Maria right until the moment before he actually declares it to her. This strategem delivers all sorts of treats—there is nothing more deliciously satisfying than playing a character who is completely unaware that he is falling in love, especially when to everyone else around him (including most importantly the audience) it’s as plain as the nose on his face.
Holding off this discovery, however, is no easy task for this actor, because, although Georg takes his sweet time to realize that Maria is the love of his life, Simon Burke fell in love with Connie Fisher from the get-go. I don’t have the superlatives to describe working with her—the voice of an angel; brilliant unfailing instinct; absolutely in the moment every second she is onstage, with stagecraft and comic timing that belie her years and experience. I would venture to say that, in my 35 years of being an actor (all right, I started young) I have rarely felt such pure joy.
Then there are the kids—three sets of them—managed and directed so excellently by Frank Thompson, each of them perfectly cast and serious and funny and heartbreaking. And the “grown-up scenes” with Elsa and Max where I get to share the stage with the wonderful Fiona Sinnott and Paul Grunert. And the joy of seeing Amy Lennox and Luke Fredericks make their West End debuts as Liesl and Rolf. And a great, warm, welcoming lovely bunch of nuns and Nazis. And the best stage management team I’ve ever worked with…AND I get to sing “Edelweiss,” and for some reason, I reckon I look all right in lederhosen …I dunno…Somewhere in my wicked miserable past, I must have done something good…