# Phillip Street Theatre

The Phillip Street Theatre (succeeded by the Phillip Theatre) was a popular and influential Australian theatre and theatrical company, located in Phillip Street in Sydney that was active from 1954 and 1971 that became well known for its intimate satirical revue productions.

## History
### Founding

William Orr was a Scottish-born impresario from Glasgow who had a background as a director and theatre administrator in London before coming to Australia. Orr felt that there was a market in Australia for the new British theatre craze, the intimate topical satirical revue, and he pioneered the format in Sydney during 1954.
Actor Gordon Chater praised Orr as a champion of Australian theatrical talent:
    "To this day I think Bill Orr should have been honoured by this country for creating the first post-war entirely professional theatre employing all Australians – the dancers, musicians, actors, lyricists and composers were all Australian."

## Performers

Between 1954 and 1971, Orr promoted a series at the Phillip Street Theatre that became known as the 'Phillip Street Revues' which featured many famous Australian performers.

### List of performers

* Actor
* Ray Barrett
* Robina Beard (sister of Chris Bearde)
* Wendy Blacklock
* Noeline Brown
* Gordon Chater
* Ruth Cracknell
* Barry Creyton
* Gloria Dawn
* Alastair Duncan
* Judi Farr
* Barry Humphries
* Dawn Lake
* Margo Lee
* Bobby Limb
* Reg Livermore
* John Meillon
* Kevin Miles
* Patricia Pearson
* Jill Perryman
* June Salter
* Bud Tingwell

## Productions

In 1953 Orr premiered a small revue, Metropolitan Merry-Go-Round at the Metropolitan Church Hall in Reiby Place, Sydney. This production marked the first professional credit for writer John McKellar, Jerry Donovan and Lance Mulcahy, the three writer-performers had met at school and developed their writing skills in university revues. The trio worked together on several subsequent Phillip St productions and McKellar became the driving force behind most of the Phillip St revues of the '50s and '60s
Also at this time, British-born actor Gordon Chater was appearing in the Sydney production of Hugh Hastings' play Seagulls Over Sorrento. Chater's character did not appear in that play until the end of Act II, and because it was being sent up in the Metropolitan revue, Orr managed to convince Chater to come over to the Metropolitan to introduce the sketch, which was in the first half of the revue, giving Chater enough time to make it back for his performance in Sorrento.
Orr's next revue at the Metropolitan, Maid in Egypt was again written by McKellar, Donovan and Mulcahy, and starred Leonard Teale and Patty Martin.

### Phillip Street Theatre

| Year | Title | Location | Actors |
| 1953 | Metropolitan Merry-Go-Round | Metropolitan Theatre | Alastair Duncan, David Nettheim |
| 1953 | Seagulls Over Sorrento | Metropolitan Theatre | Gordon Chater |
| 1953 | Maid in Egypt | Metropolitan Theatre | Leonard Teale & Patty Martin |
| 1954, 1955 | Hit and Run | Workers' Education Hall | Ray Barrett, Lola Brooks, Gordon Chater, John Ewart, June Salter, Bud Tingwell, Bettina Welch |
| 1954, 1955 | Top of the Bill | Workers' Education Hall | Bud Tingwell, Margo Lee, Gordon Chater |
| 1955 | Hat Trick | Workers' Education Hall | Aileen Britton, Max Oldaker, June Salter |
| 1955 | Hamlet | Workers' Education Hall | Allan Trevor, John Meillon, Owen Weingott |
| 1955 | The Duenna | Workers' Education Hall | Gordon Chater, Ruth Cracknell, Geoffrey Chard, Shirley Summers |
| 1955, 1956, 1957 | Happy Returns | Workers' Education Hall | Ray Barrett, Gordon Chater, Norman Coburn, Margo Lee, Terry McDermott, John Meillon, Madge Ryan, June Salter |
| 1955, 1956 | Two to One | Workers' Education Hall | Max Oldaker, Wendy Blacklock, Barry Humphries |
| | Olympic Hostess | Workers' Education Hall | Barry Humphries |
| 1956, 1957 | Around the Loop | Workers' Education Hall | Max Oldaker, Gordon Chater, Wendy Blacklock, Barry Humphries, June Salter |
| 1956 | Mr. and Mrs | Workers' Education Hall | Barry Humphries |
| 1956, 1958, 1959 | Alice in Wonderland | Workers' Education Hall | Robina Beard, John Bluthal, Peter Kenna, Max Meldrum |
| 1957 | Gordon Chater' | Workers' Education Hall | Gordon Chater, Reg Livermore |
| 1957 | The Willow Pattern Plate | Workers' Education Hall | John Bluthal, Ben Gabriel, Reg Livermore, Leon Thau, Owen Weingott |
| 1957, 1958 | Cross Section | Workers' Education Hall | Reg Livermore, John Meillon, Ruth Cracknell, June Salter |
| 1958, 1959 | Bats | Workers' Education Hall | John Bluthal, Ronald Frazer, |
| 1959 | The Birthday Show | Workers' Education Hall | John Bluthal, Ronald Frazer, Jill Perryman |
| 1959 | Meet Joyce Grenfell | Workers' Education Hall | Joyce Grenfell |
| 1959 | Hey Diddle Diddle | Workers' Education Hall | Robina Beard, Gordon Chater, Judi Farr |
| 1959 | A Ride on a Broomstick | Workers' Education Hall | Robina Beard, Gordon Chater |
| 1960 | Phillip Street Revue | Workers' Education Hall | Wendy Blacklock, Ronald Frazer, Peter Kenna |
| 1960 | Mistress Money | Workers' Education Hall | Robina Beard, Wendy Blacklock, Gordon Chater, Judi Farr |

### Phillip Theatre

| Year | Title | Location | Actors |
| 1961 | Out on a Limb | Australian Hall | Bettina Welch, Bobby Limb, Dawn Lake |
| 1961 | Stop Press | Australian Hall | |
| 1961 | Yes Please! | | |
| 1961-62 | Alice in Wonderland | | |
| 1962 | What's New? | | |
| 1962 | Beyond the Fringe | | |
| 1962 | A Wish is a Dream | | |
| 1962 | At It Again | Australian Hall | |
| 1963 | Flaming Youth | Australian Hall | |
| 1063 | Do You Mind! | | |
| 1963 | The Private Ear | | Gordon Chater, John Bell, Max Osbiston |
| 1963 | The Public Eye | | Gordon Chater, John Bell, Max Osbiston |
| 1964 | The Importance of Being Oscar | Australian Hall | Micheál Mac Liammóir |
| 1964 | I Must Be Talking to My Friends | | Micheál Mac Liammóir |
| 1964 | Rattle of a Simple Man | | John Meillon, June Salter |
| 1964 | Breakfast with Julia | | |
| 1964 | Is Australia Really Necessary? | | |
| 1964 | Santa's Christmas Party | | |
| 1964 | Beyond the Fringe | Australian Hall | Alastair Duncan, John Ewart |
| 1965 | The Knack | | Reg Livermore, Tom Oliver, Peter Whitford |
| 1965 | A Severed Head | | |
| 1965 | The Tintookies | | |
| 1965-66 | A Cup Of Tea, A Bex and A Good Lie Down | Australian Hall | |
| 1966 | The Fantasticks | | Ron Shand, Willie Fennell, Frank Lloyd |
| 1966 | Private Yuk Objects | | |
| 1966 | Luv | | Alastair Duncan |
| 1966 | Alice in Wonderland | | |
| 1967 | The Sound of Morley | | |
| 1967 | Hail Gloria Fitzpatrick | | |
| 1967 | There Will Be an Interval of 15 Minutes | | |
| 1967 | All By Myself (Anna Russell) | | |
| 1967 | But I Wouldn't Want to Live There | | |
| 1968 | Relatively Speaking | | |
| 1968 | The Boy Friend | | |
| 1969 | Your Own Thing | | |
| 1969 | Lie Back and Enjoy It | | |
| 1969 | Candy Stripe Balloon | | |
| 1969 | Not Now, Darling | | |
| 1970 | The Bandwagon | | |
| 1970 | Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens | | |
| 1970 | When We Are Married | | |
| 1970 | Alice in Wonderland | | |
| 1971 | The Legend of King O'Malley | | |
| 1971 | Come Live With Me | | |
| 1971 | Who Killed Santa Claus? | | |

### Second encore

| Year | Title | Location | Actors |
| 1980 | Hal: Aspects of Henry IV Pt.1 | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1980 | Puss in Boots | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1980 | Under Milk Wood | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1980 | Little Red Riding Hood | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1980 | Festival of Sydney Playwrights | | |
| 1980 | Glad Bags | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1981 | When in Rome | | |
| 1981 | Hammer | | |
| 1981 | Five Minutes, Mr Klein | | |
| 1981 | The Centenarian | | |
| 1981 | You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown | | |
| 1981 | Two for a Theatre | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1981 | Smoking is a Health Hazard | Workers' Education Hall | Max Gillies |
| 1981 | Scanlan | Workers' Education Hall | Max Gillies |
| 1981 | Dick Whittington and His Cat | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1981 | The Stripper's Progress | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1981 | Blood of the Lamb | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1981 | Flexitime | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1981, 1984 | Goldilocks and the Three Bears | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | Indian Summer | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | Conundra | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | I've Come about the Suicide | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | The Right Man | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | The Anniversary | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | Sleeping Beauty | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | God's Favorite | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982, 1984 | Jack and the Beanstalk | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | Cowardy Custard | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1982 | Cinderella | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983 | Children of a Lesser God | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983 | The First Night of Pygmalion | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983 | Mother Goose | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983 | Macbeth | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983 | Babes in Toyland | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983 | Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983 | The Actor's Nightmare | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1983, 1986 | Aladdin and His Magic Lamp | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1984, 1985 | The Removalists | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1984 | Us or Them | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1984. 1987 | Little Red Riding Hood | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1984 | The Cake Man | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1984, 1985, 1988 | The Shifting Heart | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1984, 1985, 1987 | The Diary of Anne Frank | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1985 | An Evening with Queen Victoria | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1985, 1987 | The Glass Menagerie | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1985, 1986, 1987 | The Club | Workers' Education Hall | Mark Butler, Tom Considine, Kevin Healy, Peter Phelps, Kit Taylor |
| 1986, 1987 | Hamlet | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1986, 1988 | Pygmalion | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1986 | Three Little Pigs | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1987-88 | Whose Life is it Anyway? | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1987 | The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1988, 1989 | Educating Rita | Workers' Education Hall | Terence Donovan, Amanda Muggleton |
| 1988 | Puss in Boots | Workers' Education Hall | |
| 1988 | Cinderella | Workers' Education Hall | |

## Creation of the Phillip Street Theatre

In 1954 Orr and his partner Eric Duckworth were given the use of the Workers' Education Hall in Phillip Street, Sydney, as a theatre, and they renamed it the Phillip Street Theatre. It was here that Orr staged his next revue, Top of the Bill (1954), written by McKellar, Donovan and Mulcahy and featuring Charles "Bud" Tingwell, Margo Lee and an (unknown) American actor, with Chater making a guest appearance in each half of the show. During rehearsals the American actor repeatedly turned up drunk, so he was sacked a week before the premiere and Chater was asked to step into the role. The revue included a sketches about the Petrov Affair, with Chater and Tingwell as David Jones floorwalkers and Chater in a solo turn as Australian dress designer "Pierre of Balmain" (a play on words that conflated the French fashion house Pierre Balmain and the Sydney suburb of Balmain, which was at that time a run-down working-class enclave). Orr planned to stage three shows a week, but the new revue proved a great success—within days they were playing six shows a week plus Friday and Saturday matinees, and in his memoir Chater recounted that "there were queues around the corner of Phillip Street down to Castlereagh, and the production ran for two months."
Orr established a board of directors for the Phillip Street Theatre that included author Morris West, journalist Betty Best, charity fundraiser Nola Dekyvere and (later) lawyer John Kerr. Despite the success of Top of the Bill and its follow-up Hat Trick (1955) the board decided that the next show would be a straight production of Hamlet, which flopped. This was followed by a production of Sheridan's comedy The Duenna, set to music by Julian Slade and directed by British director Lionel Harris, who had been brought to Australia to direct a local production that featured visiting British actors Lewis Casson, Sybil Thorndike, Ralph Richardson and (his wife) Meriel Forbes. Harris asked Chater to play the role of Mendoza and also cast the young Ruth Cracknell. The production was well-received but it was terminated in the middle of its run by the hall's owners, the Workers' Educational Association (WEA), who took legal action against the theatre company to regain use of the hall.
Orr's next production was another satirical revue, Two to One (1955), starring veteran Australian musical star Max Oldaker, with Wendy Blacklock and a rising young actor-comedian from Melbourne, Barry Humphries. A couple of years earlier, while touring country Victoria with a theatre company headed by playwright Ray Lawler, Humphries had amused his fellow actors with a parody of a middle-class Australian housewife; for the company's end-of-year revue he named her Edna Everage and played her in a sketch he wrote for the show, called "Olympic Hostess". Although he had originally assumed that his 'turn' as Edna was a one-off, he decided to revive "Olympic Hostess" for the Phillip Street revue and its success helped to launch what became a fifty-year career for the self-proclaimed "Housewife Megastar".
Orr's next successful revue was Around the Loop (1956) which again teamed Oldaker, Chater, Blacklock and Humphries, plus newcomer June Salter. Humphries revived the Edna character (for what he said would be the last time) and the revue proved to be a major hit, playing eight shows a week for 14 months. During this period Humphries was living near Bondi and while out walking one day he had a chance meeting with an elderly man who had a high, scratchy voice and a pedantic manner of speech; this encounter inspired the creation of another of Humphries' best-known and most enduring characters, pensioner Sandy Stone.

## Move to the Phillip Theatre

When the Phillip Street hall was demolished in 1961 (at the time of the Bobby Limb and Dawn Lake production Out on a Limb) Orr moved his company to the Australian Hall at 150 Elizabeth St, renaming it the Phillip Theatre. There he presented a string of successful revue productions, the best known of which was John McKellar's A Cup Of Tea, A Bex and A Good Lie Down (1965), the title of which immediately passed into the Australian vernacular. Other known productions included a local version of the landmark British satirical sketch show Beyond the Fringe (1962), Stop Press (1961) The Importance of Being Oscar (1964), Flaming Youth (1963) and At It Again.

## The Mavis Bramston show

The topical satire featured in the Phillip St revues exerted a considerable influence on Australia's first satirical television comedy series, The Mavis Bramston Show (1964–68), and the Bramston show featured numerous cast and crew who had worked in these live revues, including Gordon Chater, Barry Creyton, June Salter, Wendy Blacklock, writer John McKellar and writer-producer James Fishburn.

## Conversion to cinema venue

The Phillip Street revues ended in 1971 when the Phillip Theatre changed hands and became the Richbrooke then the Rivoli (when leased briefly by Hoyts), then the Mandarin Cinema, Mandolin and finally Dave's Encore. The building has now returned to its original form of the Australian Hall.

## Second encore

Note that the Phillip Street Theatre, separately to Orr's Phillip Theatre, recommenced operations in 1963 following the completion of a 300-seat theatre within the office block which replaced the 1961 demolition. This new Phillip Street Theatre continued until 1989 with children's drama classes and productions such as Peter and Ellen Williams' 1988 production of their pantomime Cinderella, with Derek Williams as musical director.