28 September 2024
Inspired by real life events, Mark Rosenblatt’s quite extraordinary debut play (directed with great skill by Nicholas Hytner, who runs the Bridge Theatre, making his Royal Court debut) explores with dark humour the difference between considered opinion and dangerous rhetoric.
Across a single afternoon at his family home, and rocked by an unexpectedly explosive confrontation, world-renowned children’s author Roald Dahl is forced to choose: make a public apology or risk his name and reputation. The author’s own words are deployed to chilling effect in this measured and gripping play
It’s the summer of 1983, his seminal children’s book The Witches is about to hit the shelves and Dahl is making last-minute edits. But a public outcry at a recent, explicitly antisemitic article he wrote won’t die down… Israel has invaded Lebanon, and Dahl wrote a review of a book about the war in which his condemnation of the civilian casualties inflicted by Israel has pitched into conflation of the country with Jewish people in general, accusing them of switching ‘rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers’.
An intervention of sorts is being attempted by his fiancée Felicity Crosland (a no-nonsense Rachel Stirling) and his publisher and a survivor of the Holocaust, Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey) – “We can make it go away!”
But in the extraordinary performance at the heart of Nicholas Hytner’s production, Lithgow’s slippery, world-weary Dahl is is a complex figure, unwilling to play ball. Superbly played by Lithgow with lofty disdain for his critics and fathom-deep understanding of what it is to be a child, this is a portrait of a flawed humanitarian. Giant starts off breezily, heading into what seems like drawing room drama, before becoming as dark and sharp-toothed as one of Dahl’s fictional monsters.
Dahl is unequivocally antisemitic, but Rosenblatt isn’t interested in simply attacking him. He shows us a Dahl who is as compassionate as he is capricious; whose actions are both childlike – especially his earnest love for children – and also childish. He is deeply principled about the suffering of Palestinians, to the point of outright racism against Jews.
After a run of duds, it’s hard to think back to when the Royal Court last staged a play that felt so dangerous, or one so spectacularly good. It is subtle, intelligent and stylishly crafted. And boasts the best acting in town.
Giant transfers to the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre Saturday 26 April – Saturday 02 August 2025
