First Night Sublime Lithgow gives us the whole Dahlin all his monstrous glory

There’s no more urgent play in London right now than Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant, and no better performance than John Lithgow’s in it as an irascible, cruel, needling Roald Dahl.

- NICK CURTIS CHIEF THEATRE CRITIC

This blistering piece of theatre deals with the fallout of a book review Dahl wrote in 1983, on the eve of the publication of The Witches, in which his criticism of Israel’s brutal retaliation against rocket attacks from Lebanon bled into outright antisemitism.

Dahl’s second wife-to-be Felicity Crosland and Jewish representatives of his British and American publishers try to persuade him to apologise or at least qualify his views, which only spurs the vicious old curmudgeon to greater offence. The atmosphere in Nicholas Hytner’s production is electric throughout.

The play — Rosenblatt's first, he’s usually a director — was conceived four years ago and programmed by the Royal Court in 2023, days before Hamas's October 7 outrage and Israel's punishing, ongoing response. It remains depressingly current.