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.
Vladimir (Waiting for Godot) (with Zero Mostel as Estragon) and - in one rather notorious version of the play - Steve Martin (with Robin Williams as Estragon) and Patrick Stewart. In Tom Stoppard's "Godot" pastiche, "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead", the character Guildenstern closely resembles Vladimir. "Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable in those days. Now it's too late. They wouldn't even let us up." "Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my