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
Play (play) a woman and two men, Syke and Conk, figures in white boxes. In the final version we are presented instead with, as Michael Robinson describes it in "The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett", “the three corners of love’s eternal triangle (the emphasis here is on the eternal) … They have no names [now], simply the designations M, W1 and W2 which aim at anonymity but also stand for all men and women who have, like them, been caught up in a three-part love affair,” The play is entitled "Play", in the same way that Beckett’s