It is the summer of 1963, and in the house of a well-known writer in a village in Bucks, Felicity Crosland (nicknamed Liccy) is hosting a lunch party. One guest is already there, another late arriving.
This could be a single-set, old fashioned drawing room drama, but the house is being renovated, the ceiling held up by props, the back wall replaced by plastic sheeting. The turmoil is not just domestic, for this is the home of Roald Dahl, whose review of a recent book about Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon has outraged many with what they see as its anti-Semitism. The guests are from his UK and US publishers seeking to limit the damage this may have done to his reputation and their sales.
This meeting is a fiction, Jennie Stone an invention as sales director at Dahl’s US publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, but Tom Maschler was the real MD at Jonathan Cape (I used to work with him) and the words of the review in question are accurately quoted and those of a fictional telephone interview based on things he actually said.
The play opens with Dahl and Maschler going through illustrated proofs of his next book, The Witches, and already we are seeing the egotistical, difficult side of an author who could also be very caring. He is complaining that pictures aren’t placed where he wants them and that illustrator Quentin Blake gets too big a share of the royalties.
Elliot Levey’s smooth, confident Maschler knows just how to handle things until Mrs Stone arrives (late and unprepared). Although both publishers are Jews, Maschler treats Dahl as a friend, wants to keep the peace, but after an opening request to sign a book for her teenage son, she finds it difficult to hide her anger. Romola Garai shows it increasingly breaking through until this becomes a confrontation that shocks her deeply. The pretence that she has flown over specially on the red-eye (when actually already in the UK on a family holiday) was supposed to make Dahl feel good, but she’s now under attack.
As Roald Dahl, John Lithgow is splendid, not just irascible and finding weird fun in outraging others, but still a strangely loveable monster and a man who has to take painkillers before he can make love and only shows his pain when others won’t notice. A scene with Richard Hope as handyman Wally gives a glimpse at his personal tragedies, and he shares his gleefulness with Tessa Bonham Jones’s housekeeper, Hallie.
Some theatres, concerned about the effect on their funding or sponsorship, are censoring what they put on, but the Royal Court here risks a contentious subject that could not be more topical, and in his debut play, Mark Rosenblatt (already a respected director) proves to be an able dramatist. Nicholas Hytner, who was involved in the play’s development, directed this finely detailed production and Bob Crowley designed it.