newspapers. Most audience members were baffled by the play. Theatregoers would leave after the first act, describing it as a play where "nothing happens", and taxi drivers would wait in front of the theatre to take them home. The Miami showing caused the cancellation of the showings in New York. By April 1956, new showings were planned. That month, Schneider and most of the cast were replaced. Herbert Berghof took over as director and E. G. Marshall replaced Tom Ewell as Vladimir. The play had its Broadway premiere at the John Golden Theatre on 19 April 1956, with Bert Lahr as Estragon, E. G. Marshall as Vladimir, Alvin Epstein as Lucky, and Kurt Kasznar as Pozzo. The New York showing of the play prompted discussions of the play being an allegory. One reviewer, Henry Hewes of the Saturday Review, identified Godot as God, Pozzo as a capitalist-aristocrat, and Lucky as labour-proletarian. This prompted Beckett to issue a rare statement, stating that the reaction was based on a misconception of the play. To Beckett, the play tries not to be able to be defined. The New York showing of the play was well-received with critics. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times praised Lahr for his performance as Estragon. The production was recorded as a two-record album by Columbia Masterworks Records. In 1957, four years after its world premiere, Waiting for Godot was staged for one night only at the San Quentin State Prison in California. Herbert Blau with the San Francisco Actor's Workshop directed the production. Some 1,400 inmates encountered the performance. Beckett later gave Rick Cluchey, a former prisoner from San Quentin, financial and moral support over a period of many years. Cluchey played Vladimir in two productions in the former Gallows room of the San Quentin California State Prison, which had been converted into a 65-seat theatre and, like the German prisoner before him, went on to work on a variety of Beckett's plays after his release. Cluchey said, "The thing that everyone in San Quentin understood about Beckett, while the rest of the world had trouble catching up, was what it meant to be in the face of it." The attitude of this troupe was to move it away from a commercial attitude to an avant garde attitude. As well, the play did not have competition between the actors playing Vladimir and Estragon for being the star