Giant is another kind of triumph – a brilliant play about a loathsome man. Roald Dahl, who wrote Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox and many other grotesque, darkly comic and sometimes harshly violent fantasies for children, was a world-class hater (to pinch a phrase from an American television presenter who recently got fired for using it, correctly, to describe an American politician) and he hated many things but mainly, he hated Jews.
In Mark Rosenblatt’s play, with a towering performance by John Lithgow, Dahl’s anti-Semitic utterances are direct quotes from his own writing or interviews. He was not ashamed of his views about Jews, indeed he took every opportunity to press them on anyone who would listen. Here, it could be argued that he has a whole new audience for them in the form of a West End play but at a time of rising anti-Semitism, Rosenblatt’s play will hopefully have the opposite effect than he intended. Although, don’t bet on it.
I came late to Giant as I was in the States when it opened, but this week I saw it with two non-Jewish friends and they were more shocked than I was by its forthright anti-Semitism, barely impeded by the mild opposition from his Jewish publisher, Tom Maschwitz (Elliot Levey), or the more impassioned argument from a Jewish-American publishing executive (Aya Cash) who takes him on, somewhat hysterically, but to no noticeable effect.
The cast, including Rachael Stirling as his long-suffering fiancee Felicity Crosland, are splendid and directed by Nick Hytner with his usual sensitivity, but their performances, and their modifying dialogue, fail to make a dent in the extraordinary force of John Lithgow’s anti-Semitic monster, Roald Dahl.
