Peter O'Shaughnessy developed considerably. In September 1957, he staged the first Australian production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" at the Arrow Theatre in Melbourne with himself as Vladimir and Humphries as Estragon. It proved a hit with both audiences and critics. The critic of the Melbourne "Sun" wrote "so engrossing and well-done is this extraordinary adventure by Samuel Beckett regimented by Peter O'Shaughnessy's tender care that for me the evening passed by on wings". Later in the same year, O'Shaughnessy planned a production of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" for December, in tandem with a children's play to be performed at matinees.
Samuel Beckett in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin on Good Friday, 13 April 1906, to William Frank Beckett, a quantity surveyor and descendant of the Huguenots, and Maria Jones Roe, a nurse, when both were 35. They had married in 1901. Beckett had one older brother, Frank Edward Beckett (1902–1954). At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool in Dublin, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsfort