Waiting for Godot Feelings ran high and the opposition, led by Sir Malcolm Sargent, threatened to resign if "Godot" won [The Best New Play category]. An English compromise was worked out by changing the title of the award. "Godot" became The Most Controversial Play of the Year. It is a prize that has never been given since." In the Australian premiere at the Arrow Theatre in Melbourne in 1957, Barry Humphries played Estragon opposite Peter O'Shaughnessy's Vladimir. Although not his favourite amongst his plays, "Waiting for Godot" was the work which brought Beckett fame and financial stability and as such it always held
Play (play) (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his mistress (W2). Their “[f]aces [are] so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns.” Beckett had used similar imagery before, Mahood’s jar in "The Unnameable", for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in "Endgame". At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus"; the effect is unintelligible. The main part of this play is made up