started quite soon after the curtain had risen. The audible groans were also fairly disconcerting ... The curtain fell to mild applause, we took a scant three calls (Peter Woodthorpe reports only one curtain call) and a depression and a sense of anti-climax descended on us all. The critics were less than kind but "[e]verything changed on Sunday 7 August 1955 with Kenneth Tynan's and Harold Hobson's reviews in The Observer and The Sunday Times. Beckett was always grateful to the two reviewers for their support ... which more or less transformed the play overnight into the rage of London." "At the end of the year, the Evening Standard Drama Awards were held for the first time ... Feelings ran high and the opposition, led by Sir Malcolm Sargent, threatened to resign if Godot won [The Best New Play category]. An English compromise was worked out by changing the title of the award. Godot became The Most Controversial Play of the Year. It is a prize that has never been given since." On 27 April 1960, the BBC Third Programme broadcast the very first radio adaptation, directed by Donald McWhinnie, with Patrick Magee as Vladimir, Wilfrid Brambell as Estragon, Felix Felton as Pozzo, Donal Donnelly as Lucky and Jeremy Ward as The Boy. On 26 June 1961, Donald McWhinnie directed a production broadcast on BBC Television, with Jack MacGowran as Vladimir, Peter Woodthorpe as Estragon, Felix Felton as Pozzo, Timothy Bateson as Lucky and Mark Mileham as The Boy. In December 1964, Nicol Williamson played Vladimir, Alfred Lynch played Estragon and Jack MacGowran played Lucky in a production at London's Royal Court Theatre directed by Anthony Page. This was the first West End revival since the play's British première. US Planning for an American tour for Waiting for Godot started in 1955. The first American tour was directed by Alan Schneider and produced by Michael Myerberg. Bert Lahr and Tom Ewell acted in the initial production. The first part of the tour was a disaster. The play was originally set to be shown in Washington and Philadelphia. However, low advance sales forced the play to be performed in Miami for two weeks in early January 1956 at the newly-opened Coconut Grove Playhouse, where the audience was made up of vacationers. It had been promoted as "the laugh sensation of two continents" in the notices run by Myerberg in the local