“Giant” at Royal Court Theatre
Neil Dowden in west London
2 October 2024
In a 1982 TV interview, when asked how he’d like to be remembered, Roald Dahl replied (misattributing a quote from Hilaire Belloc to Oscar Wilde): “When I’m gone, I hope it will be said: ‘My sins are scarlet, but my books are read.’” The following year, first in a book review he wrote for Literary Review and then doubling down in an interview with the New Statesman, he made some anti-Semitic statements that have indeed tainted his reputation but have not stopped him remaining one of the world’s best-selling authors. Mark Rosenblatt’s engrossing new play Giant focuses on this pivotal moment when Dahl publically revealed a disturbing side of his persona that is hinted at in the dark fantasies of his children’s novels.
John Lithgow and Elliot Levey.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
It takes place in almost real time over one summer afternoon in 1983 at Gipsy House, Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, Dahl’s long-time family home. His new book The Witches is just about to come out with great expectations, but Dahl is in turmoil. He is in constant pain from backache (originating in a crash he had as a fighter pilot in the Second World War), while the house is undergoing a disorientating refurbishment overseen by his fiancée, interior designer Felicity “Liccy” Crosland, who was his mistress for 11 years before recently moving in after his divorce from Hollywood actress Patricia Neal. More seriously, he is having a crisis meeting with his British publisher Tom Maschler and American publishing sales director Jessie Stone who want him to apologize for his anti-Semitic comments in the review.
Dahl – aware of the power he wields in the book world – is not minded to back down from his strongly held views. His stubborn wilfulness not only eventually riles even the pragmatic Maschler, but leads to a heated confrontation with the initially deferential Stone – both of whom are Jewish themselves, but who have a vested interest in helping Dahl – with Liccy caught in the crossfire. With a constable outside for protection following a threatening phone call, Dahl finally seems to concede the need for conciliation, but the interview he agrees to do only puts oil on the fire.
As an experienced director, Rosenblatt has skilfully used his knowledge of stagecraft for his debut play, which is an intriguing mix of fact and fancy. The quotes about Jews from Dahl’s review (“Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much pitied victims to barbarous murderers”) and even worse from his subsequent interview (“even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason”) which we hear played out on the phone with journalist Mike Coren are verbatim. And Maschler was indeed Dahl’s publisher as managing director of Jonathan Cape. But Stone of Farrar, Straus & Giroux is fictitious, as is the group meeting at Dahl’s house. The scenario may be a pretext for an animated debate about Dahl’s dangerous conspiracy theories, but Rosenblatt succeeds in making it an involving clash of personalities as well as ideas.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
This is by no means a hatchet job on Dahl. We see his humorous charm, as well as his genuine empathy for children (including understanding what Stone must be feeling as the parent of a sick child; his own baby son suffered from hydrocephalus after an accident – and he also lost a young daughter to measles encephalitus). Indeed, his anti-Semitic rant was primarily triggered by the mass killings especially of children following Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982 – hitting a nerve now with the macabre coincidental timing for the opening of a play that has been developed over several years. But as the action progresses it becomes clear that Dahl’s childlike playfulness masks a manipulative nastiness that verges on the monstrous. He may be a “Giant” of literature as well as an imposing presence with his six feet four height, but he falls far short of being a BFG.
Nicholas Hytner – who persuaded Rosenblatt to write this play himself when he originally had the idea for it but was thinking of commissioning a playwright – directs the production with assurance and sensitivity, allowing plenty of humour to punctuate the intense discussions. Bob Crowley’s set shows a home in transition, strewn with stepladders, planks of wood, plastic sheeting, and cardboard boxes, reflecting the upheaval going on in Dahl’s professional and domestic life.
Giving a superb performance, American stage and screen star John Lithgow not only bears an striking resemblance to Dahl physically, but more importantly convincingly conveys the complex, flawed personality of a writer who has thrived on unleashing his grotesque imagination in stories but who does not where the boundaries are in real life. Rachael Stirling also impresses as the much younger, conciliatory Liccy who tends to treat her husband-to-be as a naughty child. Elliot Levey subtly shows how Maschler – a Kindertransport escapee who has distanced himself from his roots while assimilating to English culture – has cultivated a suave carapace to deflect any racial prejudice. And Romola Garai gives the highly strung Stone a real emotional heft in her clashes with Dahl, whose writing she has adored since childhood but who now becomes a fallen idol.
