By Matthew Wexler
Sitting in Broadway’s Music Box Theatre, the irony isn’t lost on me. I’m watching legendary actor John Lithgow tear into a ferocious portrayal of Roald Dahl like a famished tiger hovering over fresh meat. The theatre was built by Irving Berlin and Sam H. Harris—both Jewish—and later acquired by the Shubert Organization, founded by three Jewish brothers. And Dahl? A self-proclaimed anti-Semite.
In Giant, Playwright Mark Rosenblatt takes audiences into the eye of a storm, creating a face-off between the celebrated children’s author, his UK publisher, and a US sales director, who are both also Jewish.
Rosenblatt found inspiration for the play from a 1983 book review Dahl wrote for Literary Review, referring to Jews as “barbarous murderers.” But it wasn’t a one-and-done. “I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere,” Dahl later told The New Statesman, “even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” This from the man who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach.
A 6’6″ problem with no easy exits
If the subject matter makes you squirm, good. At least according to Lithgow, who recently told the New York Times, “I am fascinated by every variety of human experience.” The role presents Lithgow with a Herculean challenge: how to create, if not an empathetic character, at least one that we don’t completely loathe for over two hours. The two-time Tony winner not only rises to the occasion, he towers over it, both literally and figuratively.
Dahl stood at 6’6”, but it was his unwavering disdain for the state of Israel, and subsequently all Jewish people, that drew attention late in his career. Lithgow imbues Dahl with nuance and spontaneity in the simmering confrontation that plays out over one afternoon at his Buckinghamshire estate.
For a moment, you think he might cave when overly earnest Aya Cash, as sales director Jessie Stone, pleads, “Just apologize! You understand the power of language more than anyone! How it can twist things out of shape. And how it can make things whole again.”
Giant makes no such restorative promises. But it does ask us to consider who and what we consume. Will you be watching the new Harry Potter TV series, executive-produced by original author and known transphobe J.K. Rowling?
If and how do we separate the art from the artist? It’s a giant question worth asking.
Is ‘Giant’ worth seeing?
4 out of 5 stars
John Lithgow captivates in Giant, an unflinching dismantling of Roald Dahl’s antisemitism and what it costs us to love the art beyond the artist.
- Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th St., New York City
- Notable performers: John Lithgow, Aya Cash, Elliot Levey, Rachael Stirling
- Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes, including one intermission
- Performances through June 28, 2026
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