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.
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