Barry Humphries Humphries was living near Bondi and while out walking one day he had a chance meeting with an elderly man who had a high, scratchy voice and a pedantic manner of speech; this encounter inspired the creation of another of Humphries' most enduring characters, Sandy Stone. In September 1957, Humphries appeared as Estragon in "Waiting for Godot", in Australia's first production of the Samuel Beckett play at the Arrow Theatre in Melbourne directed by Peter O'Shaughnessy who played Vladimir. In 1958, Humphries and O'Shaughnessy collaborated on and appeared in the "Rock'n'Reel Revue" at the New Theatre in Melbourne where Humphries
Words and Music (play) use of music in the play and the conceptual nature of Words/Music as "characters" sets up a difficult to achieve convention. One might say that Music delivers a form of "line" with each iteration as part of its/his "character function." The challenges Beckett sets up for the composer are manifold. He ascribes attitudes, intentions and interpersonal relating to Music that stretch the "normal" parameters of what music can achieve as a form of expression. Perhaps the point where music and text meet and become the same thing/interchangeable was the place Beckett sought in most of his writing endeavors. Certainly that