There can’t be many authors whose reputation has been so assiduously protected as Roald Dahl . Beloved, brilliant, endlessly and lucratively adapted, he still sells in the millions. “I’m a direct sort,” the big friendly giant says to his Jewish publisher in a play set over the course of two hours on a hot afternoon in 1983.
“How do you feel about Israel?” Oof. Mark Rosenblatt’s debut play isn’t afraid to go there, and way beyond. Head-on, unflinchingly, Giant confronts the vile antisemitism of one of the most beloved children’s authors of all time, while sweeping along in its ferocious cross-currents of dialogue all the pitched battles of society today: authors with controversial opinions, art versus artist, complicity and silence, the ways we protect the powerful.
It’s hard to think when the Royal Court last staged a play that felt so dangerous, or one so spectacularly good. Yet it’s all come from unexpected directions. Director supremo Nicholas Hytner runs his own theatre, the Bridge, and yet chooses to direct this play at the Royal Court.
Rosenblatt has a successful career as a director himself, but turns to playwriting with a play that many theatres would cavil at – and the Royal Court itself is still repairing the damage from an antisemitism controversy in 2022. A weird mix of things, and just as in Dahl’s books, magic happens. It’s shocking, challenging, uncomfortable.
Dahl’s Buckinghamshire house is being renovated. He’s just divorced hi.