A New Play About Roald Dahl and Antisemitism Marks a ‘Giant’ Step for the Broadway Season

“I used to think they were separate things — Israelis, Jews,” says the central character in “Giant,” a new play by Mark Rosenblatt. “But now, now I see…no matter what they say, it’s the same bag: the clubbing together, the assertion of influence, the outraged defense…Then bam! Right there, running rings around us.” He adds, “Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”These words are not uttered in response to the current war in Iran, or the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. They were actually first spoken by Roald Dahl, the beloved author of children’s classics such as “James and the Giant Peach” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” in a 1983 interview, and they are repeated in this new Broadway production by John Lithgow, who plays Dahl, magnificently, under Nicholas Hytner’s robust direction.Mr. Rosenblatt finished writing “Giant” — which won three Olivier Awards last year following its West End premiere, including best new play and, for Mr. Lithgow, best actor — before the Oct. 7 massacre that precipitated the latest round of ugliness in the Middle East. Drawn from true events, the play unfolds just before that damning article was published, in Dahl’s bucolic English home, handsomely represented by the renowned scenic designer Bob Crowley, as it is undergoing renovations, further irritating its already exacerbated owner.Dahl had already been under fire for a laudatory review of a book detailing Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in which he declared that all Jews had a responsibility to denounce the country established as their refuge. That invasion, which led to the slaughter of men, women, and children, was preceded by a series of attacks and counterattacks in which the Palestinian Liberation Organization aimed rockets at civilian targets, including Israeli schools.This point is raised in “Giant” by a sales director at Dahl’s American publishing company, named Jessie Stone, who happens to be Jewish. “What would your government do if militants constitutionally committed to wiping Britain off the map started firing rockets into Kent from the French coast? For ten days?” Jessie asks Roald, the character. “Serve tea and scones?”Jessie arrives at Chez Dahl as a lower-level employee and nervous fan, hoping to help with damage control. Then Roald inquires, with typical bluntness, if she is Jewish: “Was that Stein once?” he asks, sneeringly referencing her last name, and Jessie, whose anxiety and indignation are relayed in a nicely measured performance by Aya Cash, evolves into a sparring partner and ideological foil.Largely, but not exclusively, through Roald and Jessie’s interaction, “Giant” explores — with extraordinary clarity and courage, to say nothing of timeliness — not only how anti-Zionism can be used as a shield for antisemitism, but how the latter can figure into disproportionate criticism of Israel, however controversial or destructive some of its government’s actions.We also meet Tom Maschler, who was Dahl’s British publisher and was Jewish as well, a Holocaust survivor, in fact, though as he’s depicted in “Giant,” at least, this doesn’t figure heavily into either his self-image or his concerns about Roald’s antics. “I was a boy,” Tom says dismissively of his escape from Germany. “I was at school when Israel was founded. School.”Like so many Jews, Tom, portrayed here by a witty Elliot Levey, has clearly had the primacy of assimilation drilled into him. Moreover, his interests in protecting his star novelist, whatever his transgressions, aren’t purely professional or financial. “In his books,” Tom insists, Dahl “picks a glorious, playful path through the chaos of childhood. It’s the rarest of gifts. To show its cruelty but take you out the other side.”But to what extent is the cruelty itself a reflection of something darker in this celebrated figure? “Giant” is preoccupied as much with the quandary of separating the art from the artist — and accepting that artists, like all humans, are flawed — as any social or geo-political issues. It is both Mr. Rosenblatt’s triumph and Mr. Lithgow’s that Dahl comes across not as a monster, but as a proud, complicated man who is capable of empathy as well as bigotry.“Roald has spent years, long before I knew him, supporting destitute people, children especially, around the world,” notes Felicity Crosland, his fiancée here and later his second wife, who is both warm and steely in Rachael Stirling’s elegant portrait. Mr. Lithgow makes that capacity not only credible, but compatible with the bitterness and fury that come through in this remarkable performance, which also fully serves the quick, sometimes lacerating humor in Mr. Rosenblatt’s writing.Some of the most cutting and shocking lines in “Giant” are, like those mentioned at the beginning of this review, Dahl’s own, written or spoken decades ago, but that only makes them more relevant. You won’t see a more powerful play this season, or a more important one.

A New Play About Roald Dahl and Antisemitism Marks a ‘Giant’ Step for the Broadway Season

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