Many years ago I was a theatre critic, and over the years I’ve seen and written about plays of all sorts, from the powerful and provocative to the bland and banal. But I’ve never experienced the strange, eerie, even disturbing emotions that occurred recently when hearing my own name repeated and my own voice played on the stage of one of the world’s great theatres. But this is what happened at the press night of Giant at the Royal Court.
The play is written by Mark Rosenblatt and is about the famous children’s author Roald Dahl, who is played by the excellent John Lithgow. Mark contacted me three years ago, explained that he intended to write a drama about Dahl and his antisemitism, and asked if he could interview me. The reason was that in 1983, working at my first job in journalism at The New Statesman, I interviewed Dahl about a book review he’d written.
