From this website:
A couple of years later, overcoming the reluctance I had long felt, I accepted a pressing invitation to direct Godot myself at the new Maidment Theatre in Auckland. This reluctance stemmed party from my reverence for the play and from my feeling I couldn’t possibly do it justice and partly from the regrettable fact of life that the cast I regarded as ideal at that time (Peter O’Toole, Nicol Williamson, Jack MacGowran and Paul Curran) never seemed available to be directed by me—especially Jack MacGowran, rest his soul. Furthermore, I was keen to correct some wrong impressions Aucklanders had about Beckett—about the Boy, and about the widely held belief that Godot audiences had to sit stolidly, respectfully, in glum silence as though listening to a Methodist sermon. In the program I put a note saying "If you find something amusing, please feel free to laugh."
The most memorable response to my production came from the critic for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation radio, Robert Goodman, who was still stuck in an ideologically committed drama groove of yore. "Beckett," he asserted on behalf of us all, "has nothing to say to us."
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