When a beloved children’s author unleashes a brutish anti-Semitic screed, his career is threatened. His publisher and wife scramble into damage control mode. Will the author back down? Will he apologize? That is the subject of “Giant,” coming to Broadway in the spring.
The play’s subject and the incident it depicts are based on true events.
In 1983, beloved children’s author, the 6’6” Roald Dahl, reviewed a book about the siege of West Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War.
That review was widely viewed as anti-Semitic.
Dahl’s longtime British publisher and friend descends on his home, as does a representative of his New York publisher — a young Jewish woman. Both plead and plead with him to issue a statement explaining his remarks, softening his remarks, taking back his remarks, putting his remarks in context —anything to offset the damage to his career, the upcoming publication of his new book and his pending knighthood.
The play, written by Mark Rosenblatt, premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2024 in a production starring John Lithgow as Dahl.
It won three Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Play.
Provocative in the best of times, it debuted, of course, during terrible times — the Israeli-Hamas War. In June, when we saw the play, Israel and the US had just bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. So, the issue of incursions was also timely.
Yet, for me, the onstage debate about Jews loving Israel even if not agreeing with specific actions taken by the government was most moving.
I won’t “give away” the specific way the play plays out, although it’s easy enough to Google what happened in real life. I will simply say that Dahl was no angel, no saint.
The play is disturbing. Both my husband and I got little sleep that night. In fact, I don’t think in a lifetime of theatergoing I ever saw a production that so affected me. To sit there and have hate spewed forth felt so personal, so frightening, so in-the-moment.
“Giant”challenges viewers not only to think about anti-Semitism, the current State and state of Israel, but also how we contemplate our decidedly flawed cultural (and political) heroes. Can we still admire their works of art, knowing what flawed individuals they are?
Great art, great music and great prose are sometimes made by morally awful or (at a minimum) “problematic” people. Do we reject their creative works? Do we stop reading Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach with our children?
Do we stop admiring misogynistic Picasso’s paintings?
Do we tear up our copies of anti-Semitic Virginia Woolf’s works?
And what about the indisputably magnificent artwork of Caravaggio? He murdered somebody!
I don’t know the answers, but like any good work of art, “Giant” raises the painfully right questions. I absolutely recommend you see the play when it opens this spring but be prepared to squirm — and think.