Intimate revue.
Comprising topical sketches, songs, and dance, Out on a Limb was the first production by the Phillip Street Theatre company in its new premises at 150 Elizabeth Street. The production was largely based around the principal cast member, Bobby Limb.
Out on a Limb was criticised by the Sydney Morning Herald critic, R. C., who questioned whether the show's blandness had anything to do with the move. 'The new Phillip Street revue', he writes:
'fulfils for the most part the evident intention of its sponsors that it should be bland, pleasant, inoffensive, cosmopolitan, pretty and insipid. The lack of satirical bite in its opening last night seemed the inevitable consequence of a steady march in the direction of savourless goodwill and respectable smartness by an organisation that once traded on originality and irreverence. It was as if the move to the air-conditioned sleekness and soft, bright tastefulness of its new headquarters... signalled not only a marked and welcome gain in comfort but also a loss of nerve, a new determination to court success with flowers, smiles, and soft-centred words'.
On a positive note, R. C. records that Dawn Lake and Barbara Wyndon, 'two girls with voices of carefully assumed eccentricity', provided the brightest moments of the show (9 March 1961, p.11).
1961: Phillip Street Theatre, Sydney, 7 March.