Intimate revue.
The highlights of this Phillip Street revue, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, included Gordon Chater as
'a gushingly insincere host at a party, as a lovelorn pterodactyl aroused from icy Artic entombment by a hydrogen bomb, as a raddled old barmaid named Gracious Greta, and as quizmaster Bob Dyer.... Lyle O'Hara, still expert in her mimicking of grotesque people, tantalised her audience with her impersonations of a twitchy little boy scout trying to keep the peace among fairies who refused to believe in people, of a cynical old bingo expert impatient of twittering newcomers, or of a giddy garden lover progressively dismayed by the rabbit-paced multiplication of a multicoloured bush from Mars'. Judi Farr presented a revised version of Cinderella, 'wherein the ash-grubber was shown to be a bored stiff beatnik who didn't want to go to the palace hop', while Kevan Johnston scored a hit with his tango built around a lovers' quarrel (22 October 1959, p.7).
The presence of several favourite personalities from earlier Phillip Street shows, notable Gordon Chater, Jill Perryman, and Lyle O'Hara, was seemingly not enough to save Hey Diddle Diddle from negative criticism. For example, the Sydney Morning Herald's critic, L. B. saw the revue as having bluffed its way along on mostly second-rate material (22 October 1959, p.7).
1959: Phillip Street Theatre, Sydney, 21 October 1959 - 23 April 1960.