There’s no question that John Lithgow is one of our finest actors whether on stage or screen.
So only he could pull off a dazzling performance as an absolutely vile person with no redeeming qualities. That would be late author Roald Dahl, who wrote “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” and many other beloved children’s books.
In 1983, Dahl revealed himself as an unrepentant antisemite. Dahl reviewed Australian author Tony Clifton’s “God Cried,” a picture book about the siege of West Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War.
He claimed only to be anti Israel and not anti-Jew, but he was both, and was proud of it. He stuck with that right up until his death in 1990.
The piece he wrote in Literary Review caused a firestorm in the US. Bookstores canceled orders. The American Library Association threatened to remove all his books. According to “Giant,” a new play by first time playwright Mark Rosenblatt and directed by the distinguished Nicholas Hytner, Dahl rightly so became a pariah.
The acting, directing, and production of “Giant” are so superior that you can’t take your eyes off the stage. Lithgow is mesmerizing playing hateful, using weak humor to offset Dahl’s hideousness. The whole cast is terrific, playing his British publisher (Elliot Levey), his longtime fiancee (Rachel Stirling), the housekeeper (Stella Everett), and an American sales manager (Aya Cash) from US publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux who comes to elicit an apology before his career is destroyed.
Alas, Dahl is not going to do it, and we know that right away. He’s just vile and keeps telling everyone that, but the play just keeps raking it over. There’s nowhere to go, no arc, no learning, The sales rep — a young woman — is Jewish and he freely mocks her. The British publisher, Tom Maschler, is not only Jewish but a child of the Holocaust whose family fled the Nazi’s.
None of this makes any difference to Dahl, who sounds a lot like Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and many others who are quick to denounce Israel without considering the weight of their words. They’re instigating antisemitism while claiming a high ground.
Nonetheless, Lithgow — who won the Olivier award in Britain — will undoubtedly receive a Tony Award.
At last night’s opening, you could tell Lithgow had drawn an a List crowd. Famed billionaire philanthropist and music music mogul David Geffen sat in front of me, accompanied by new Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci. Geffen told me, by the way, that he has nothing to do with the coming revival of “Dreamgirls,” the hit musical he produced in 1981. “I’m retired,” he said, with a big smile. He’s earned it.
The Music Box Theater was packed with an eclectic array of stars including Dianne Wiest, Blythe Danner, Sarah Paulson, Bobby Cannavale, Bill Irwin, Kristen Chenoweth, Evan Jongkeit, Sara Bareilles, Patrick Ball from “The Pitt,” TV’s Jensen Ackles, and Rebecca Hall and Morgan Spector, among others.
“Giant” is hard work, especially in New York where a great deal of the audience is Jewish. Rosenblatt’s is achingly alarming in 2026 although written about something that happened in 1983. Little has changed. And that’s the whole point of “Giant,” I suppose. Better to see it than not (if you can get a ticket). The past is instructive.
One last thing: FSG did drop Dahl in the end. His last books were only published in the UK. In the play the great Roger Strauss is mentioned often. I knew him a little years ago and can’t imagine how he tolerated Dahl for a minute. The first book they published together, “The BFG,” a bestseller, had to be updated in 2023 to remove all the offensive, racist descriptions.
