The fact that Mark Rosenblatt’s challenging debut drama transfers to the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre from the Royal Court following a sold-out run is no surprise. It deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible. Giant is a thought-provoking, powerful play with razor-sharp dialogue that will make you laugh, cringe and gasp out in incredulous outrage. It’s brilliant theatre and brilliant writing.
Nicholas Hytner’s production is paced to perfection and uncannily timely given the continual flurry of headlines in the Middle East. It stars American actor John Lithgow in a ruthless portrayal of children’s author Roald Dahl, a complex, somewhat charming schoolboy bully, engaging raconteur and alarmingly loud and proud antisemite. With the war in Gaza still raging, Rosenblatt’s piece resonates deeply, asking questions about who we are, what we stand for and how we position ourselves in light of the recent conflict.
The play reverts to 1983, when Dahl publishes a pernicious, antisemitic attack in the form of a book review about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a cause close to the writer’s heart (he was an RAF fighter pilot in the Second World War, posted in Lebanon). The timing is bad for business, as it appears just before the publication of The Witches. This central theme is introduced through two of his publishers (both Jewish), British Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey) and American Jessica Stone (Aya Cash), who want him to publish an apology to limit damage to sales.
Action opens with Dahl's dining room meeting of publishers over a spot of lunch, which exudes the atmosphere of a surreptitious emergency war cabinet meeting and is where the drama escalates. “We can make it go away,” says Maschler, a survivor of the Holocaust who has zero connection to Israel and unwavering loyalty to his writer / friend, persuading the author to appease his readers and booksellers.
This latest production adds new cast member Cash, a welcome addition, who plays fictitious character Stone, convincingly capturing the slow-building outrage and disbelief of the blatant British antisemitism unveiled and thrown her way. As Lithgow first peels himself up into his statuesque full height from sitting behind the dining table, the vast height difference between him and New York sales director Stone fuels a sense of foreboding wrapped in his physically towering dominance as the dialogue between the two becomes increasingly poisonous.
Stone initially arrives in peace to broker a deal in favour of Dahl, but soon takes on the role of the injured party. In her voice, Rosenblatt has sketched us the American Jewish experience that inhabits a totally different space to the British one thus has no issues fighting her corner and exposing Dahl for the raging antisemite that he is.
The rub here, and this is what makes great drama, is that nothing is simple and straightforward in terms of characterisation, and Dahl, we learn through Stone, understands the tragedy of looking after a child with brain damage. He sniffs her out when he discovers that Stone still reads to her fifteen-year-old boy. It feels tauntingly cruel at first, until it dawns on the audience that he is referring to a shared experience.
Central to this sits Levey’s mild-mannered Maschler. Maschler, whom Levey plays with tired, resigned charm, is a fascinating character as the embodiment of the secular British Jew who isn’t remotely interested or connected to Israel. He’s more comfy sorting himself a game of tennis than airing his views on Israel’s military policy. Tanned and elegant in beige linen, when Stone asks him where he would go if Britain was unsafe for Jews, he snorts, “Provence”. And yet, whether he likes it or not, birthright alone, he’s being defined as Jewish. “I don’t pine for Jerusalem,” he says. “Don’t crave being in the majority. I prefer to live and work with people unlike me, you know?... The idea of shacking up with four million other Jews is… [he shudders].” Why should he be consigned to a stereotype that defines him? The play asks this valid question.
Meanwhile, Lithgow’s performance is a perfectly tuned masterclass in acting. Despite the odious, incredulous spewing of antisemitic hatred, he balances this with an impression of an elderly patrician-like figure with merciless blue eyes that fix with the precision of a fighter pilot pulverising his victim with words as sharpened missiles, turning anyone who contradicts his ideals into putty. This is equally matched with playful, at times a childlike humour to mask his own pain that bubbles beneath the surface fuelled by his own personal family tragedy. We both feel sorry for the writer and hate him, and this tension alone makes exciting drama.
Tessa Bonham Jones’s Hallie is a wide-smiling, easy spirit, breezing in and out offering delectable morsels to eat as the Kiwi backpacking housekeeper, until Dahl forces her into the debate by making her choose where she stands on the political spectrum. She soon disappears after that, no more flavoured sorbets in sight. While Rachel Sterling’s Felicity is brilliantly posh and ethereal, swooping in and managing (so she thinks) her bestselling author fiancé, whom she secretly has lined up for a knighthood, if he toes the line.
Bob Crowley’s set mirrors the chaos within, as the dining table where all the action happens is surrounded by walls ripped out and covered in plastic. It feels like a metaphor for tragedy under the surface of success. This is a monumental play that well deserves the Olivier and Critics’ Circle awards it has already won. While all performances light the stage, it’s Lithgow’s mercurial turn as Dahl that will no doubt go down in the history of memorable performance moments.