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 though he in fact broke off from the existentialist movement and founded his own philosophy). Though many of the themes are similar, Beckett had little affinity for existentialism as a whole. Broadly speaking, the plays deal with the subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in the face of an uncomprehending and incomprehensible world. The words of Nell—one of the two characters in "Endgame" who are trapped in ashbins, from which they occasionally peek their heads to speak—can best summarize the themes of the plays of Beckett's middle period: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,