The giant is Roald Dahl (1916-1990). The world-famous children’s author was 6 feet six inches tall. Children loved his books; but many librarians thought they were unsuitable for children and banned James and the Giant Peach, The Witches and The BFG.
His outspoken right-wing attitudes and his perceived misogyny, his anti-Semitism and his racism seriously damaged his reputation. Mark Rosenblatt concentrates on an incident in 1983, during the Israel-Lebanon War, when Dahl reviewed a book, God Cried, in which he blamed the entire Jewish race for the actions of the Israeli army:
Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much pitied victims to barbarous murderers. Never before has a race of people generated so much sympathy around the world and then in the space of a lifetime succeeded in turning that sympathy into hatred and revulsion.
The article caused an uproar. The 67-year-old Dahl was vilified in the press for his anti-semitic views. His English and American publishers, about to publish The Witches, fearing for its sales, wanted Dahl to publicly apologise, which he refused to do.
John Lithgow (6 feet four inches tall) shows Dahl’s ferocious, capricious, charming, appallingly rude and cruel nature in a masterly fashion. Dahl behaves like a belligerent nasty child when he makes a deliberately mischievously vile and unrepentant phone call to The News Statesman.
The present conflict in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon gives Giant an extra fillip. Rosenblatt describes the play as a hybrid of the real and imagined. The American sales director, played by Romola Garai, is fiction. Garai has an explosive confrontation with Dahl, a big climax for the end of the first act.
Nicolas Hytner directs this fine cast which also includes Elliot Levey as Dahl’s British publishers managing director and Rachael Sterling as Dahl’s fiancée.
Giant, brave and challenging, is well worth seeing and will surely transfer to the West End?
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website. 
