Peter O'Shaughnessy historian and folklorist". Peter O'Shaughnessy Peter O'Shaughnessy OAM (5 October 1923 – 17 July 2013) was an Australian actor, theatre director, producer and writer who presented the work of playwrights ranging from Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov to modern dramatists, such as Ionesco, Pinter and Beckett. He is best known as mentor to and collaborator with comedian Barry Humphries in his early career. O'Shaughnessy was a major exponent of Samuel Beckett, both in Australia and in Ireland. He produced the first "Waiting for Godot" in Australia in 1957. He played Krapp in the Australian premier of "Krapp's Last Tape" at
Happy Days (play) of the text and production. Even Kenneth Tynan, one of the saviours of "Godot", felt that "Happy Days" was "a metaphor extended beyond its capacity", nevertheless, he admitted Beckett's strange, insinuating power and urged his readers to buy tickets for the play. More recent revivals on stage have occurred in 2008 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, directed by Deborah Warner and starring Fiona Shaw as Winnie and Tim Potter as Willie, in 2014 at the Young Vic, starring Juliet Stevenson, and in New York City (The Flea Theater) and Pasadena (Boston Court Theatre) in 2015