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.
