Theatre review: Giant

I know I say it all the time but here comes another play set in the past that feels alarmingly relevant to the present: No, not a beloved children's author turning out to be a bit fash, but Israeli attacks on Palestine and Lebanon that draw out arguments on both sides, and the question of how to criticise the actions of a state created for a specific religion, without criticising the religion itself. Not that this was a particular concern for Roald Dahl: Mark Rosenblatt's Giant is set in 1983, when the author was under fire for publishing a review of a book about Middle Eastern politics, in which his criticism of Israel's actions came couched in much broader Antisemitic sentiment. We meet Dahl (John Lithgow) in cranky mood, where it seems his biggest concerns are the noisy remodelling of his house, and his suspicion that illustrator Quentin Blake is getting a larger share of his royalties than he deems fair.

Actually there's an unseen policeman guarding the house at all times because Dahl and his fiancée Liccy (Rachael Stirling) have received death threats, and his UK publisher Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey) is visiting him, in part to try and convince him to take them more seriously.

He's also there in hopes of moderating a potentially fractious meeting: His US publishers have sent Jessie Stone (Romola Garai,) seemingly to make sure he feels supported, as he has a history of ditching publishers he doesn't feel have shown him sufficient respect. In fact, with The Witches about to be released, she's there to see if he's willing to make any kind of apology for damage limitation, as well as to interrogate him for more personal reasons: Both publishing house representatives are Jewish, but while Tom has found his own ways to reconcile his relationship to Dahl with his views, Jessie has been shaken by the revelations about her son's favourite author.

The play's directed by Nicholas Hytner, whose London Theatre Company originally developed it; if it was at any point intended for the Bridge it's a good job Giant has instead ended up at the smaller Royal Court, as it would probably have been another of the many new plays that get dwarfed by that venue. Although dealing with huge issues it's essentially an intimate piece, with each of the acts being a single scene played out in real time, and Bob Crowley's design atmospherically gives us a house in the kind of chaos Dahl is - initially successfully - trying to pretend isn't present in his public life.

What's impressive about Giant is how even-handed it is in dealing with the geopolitical side of the story: Dahl is presented to us as someone who spent much of WWII in Palestine, and therefore feels a personal connection to the people being bombed there. It takes Jessie reading from the actual contentious review to put into context the way his feelings on the matter are phrased in unnecessarily antisemitic opinions, and presumably in large part influenced by them in the first place.

Lithgow is great in the lead, giving us Dahl as an undoubted bullying monster who revels in his power over everyone else in the story, but with the wit and charisma to make him, and the play, horribly watchable and entertaining. Garai almost steals the first act as Jessie's anger builds to breaking point, Stirling gets to shine in the second as Liccy attempts to be an acidic kind of peacemaker, and Levey gets to show a quieter internal struggle. I did think that in smaller roles Tessa Bonham Jones as the couple's Kiwi housekeeper and Richard Hope as the Big Friendly Gardener might provide some bigger significance than they do, but it's one of the few areas where the play disappoints.

And ultimately Rosenblatt and Hytner keep an ambiguity in Dahl even at the end, exposing him as a monster but not necessarily in the way we might have thought going in. Regular readers may both remember I didn't read any Dahl growing up, and only became aware of him through his twisted short stories as a teenager; the conclusion the play comes to of Dahl as an overgrown playground bully who'd still enjoy pulling the legs off ants does track with the impression I get of him when you put his adult and children's writing together (for followers of The Midnight Society he also matches the giggling imp Dahl who occasionally appears there.) The play ends with him making the more explicitly Antisemitic comments that are notorious to this day, but even here we're not given easy answers as the interview is delivered in a fit of self-destructive pique: While we're not left in any doubt that Dahl did have bigoted beliefs, we are left wondering if they were ever the point, or if it was just the cruelty and pain they would inflict that he got off on.

Giant by Mark Rosenblatt is booking until the 16th of November at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs (returns and day seats only.)

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.