FringeReview UK 2024
Giant
Royal Court Theatre and London Theatre Company
Genre: Biographical Drama, Drama, Historical, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Extraordinary plays find their time; some theatres show courage enough to mount them. The stature of this play is also not turning an unfriendly giant into a shrink-fit villain. His howl too is heard. Director Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant, tackling Roald Dahl’s antisemitism might be his debut play, but virtually nothing of it seems a debut.
Giant is both a magisterial debut and a landmark work for braving a terrain littered with – as Tom says – “booby traps… And surprise surprise – boom.”
Directed by Nicholas Hytner it runs at the Royal Court Downstairs till November 16th.
Review
Extraordinary plays find their time; some theatres show courage enough to mount them. The stature of this play is also not turning an unfriendly giant into a shrink-fit villain. His howl too is heard. Director Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant, tackling Roald Dahl’s antisemitism might be his debut play, but virtually nothing of it seems a debut. Directed by Nicholas Hytner it runs at the Royal Court Downstairs till November 16th.
The BUG Roald Dahl is taken by John Lithgow – who like Hytner and Rosenblatt contributes an essay on how they all came to be debuting at the Court. It took Lithgow 55 years from stage-managing here. Lithgow’s uncanny resemblance to Dahl is commented on; but the way he holds himself is uncanny too.
Lithgow lends a baulking humanity to Dahl, a quicksilver devilry and cruelty when alone with one other person, changing tack on a whim: exactly as Isiah Berlin said of him. In Lithgow’s hands, Dahl purrs and pulls spite like a clever child. He owns no respect for others, even in self-interest. But is shrewd enough not to release full venom in mixed company. It’s as if Matilda all along learns from her tormenter.
Set in the wake of one man’s vile words around Israel’s 1982 Lebanon invasion, it’s as if every wound of violence, persecution and prejudice has just been torn open. Yet the play was written by 2022. As Court Director David Byrne says, there’s a long history.
The play, set in August 1983 is in the wake of Dahl’s blatant antisemitism citing historical facts in 1941, which as a combatant “looping the loop” as his antagonist later claims, he partially witnessed. Indeed he still suffers from back pain sustained in a Spitfire crash that finished his flying and goads his temper here. Yet Dahl’s genuine outrage at the persecuted ‘proving’ persecutors is rooted in a ready desire to pounce on one race to the exclusion of others (Turkey with Armenians and Kurds for instance). Inset are two real documents by Dahl. The arrival of the second is the play’s plot.
It’s also the eve of publication of The Witches: itself worth seeing in a different light. Dahl’s publisher Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey, as ever superlative as rumpled peace-broker and here, moved far more by loyalty than sales) is being ribbed by Lithgow’s Dahl about the slightest concessions to how his poisonous book review has been received. Levey continually resets his approach, like an elegant voyage round his monster. Even in energised tennis mode (with the policeman posted outside after death threats) his Tom desperately keeps his sanity airborne like a wind-chopped kite.
Dahl’s 30-year marriage having ended he’s being cossetted by his lover of 11 years Lissy (Felicity, Rachael Stirling).
Stirling’s Lissy, initially on the same page as Tom, slowly reveals not only a desire for compromise but an unblinking lack of nuance into the real dark of her (now) fiancé. Her empathic limits are carefully shaded and realised by Stirling with a slight vocal hardening.
Tom though has arranged the arrival of Jessie Stone (Romola Garai) from his U.S. publisher. Garai starts soft then, goaded past an intolerable degree, explodes. It’s a phenomenal performance as Garai raises her objections, returns to muteness then in several scenes reacts to being blindsided in different guises: as Jessie’s conventional U.S. world-view is challenged in turn.
Dahl quicky brutally discovers Jessie’s Jewish (calling her Miss Stein, a sickeningly-familiar gambit) and the stand-off escalates to a first-act end that might seem hard to top.
Yet in the subtler Act Two Rosenblatt does just that. Working off his Dahl’s tendency to reveal to one person only, he peels back the skewball tennis, compromises and sudden feints.
And in Lithgow’s hands the humane side glows like a filament of grace. Jessie’s son Archie suffers as Dahl’s son has, let alone the daughter who died. Rosenblatt springs two separate scenes where this operates. and in the second after much carnage you might in other hands be left with a queasy benediction.
After an edgy and disgraceful assault on Tom, Rosenblatt engineers duets between Dahl and Jessie, and in an under-crafted move towards the end introduces groundsman Wally Saunders (Richard Hope) for a single determining scene. Hope, laconic in the dial-a-saw Saunders is being mined for, is underused and might have been brought in far earlier.
Another involves New Zealander cook and housekeeper Hallie (a beautifully understated Tessa Bonham Jones) who quietly registers Dahl’s phone conversation. Earlier she’s proven as elegantly deflective as Tom with her response to boycotts: “what does the avocado think?” Now we find out.
Even after these, Rosenblatt surprises to the end in a final (and rare) private exchange with Dahl and Lissy.
At the heart of Rosenblatt’s argument is the levels of antisemitism around conflating being Jewish with Israel. Indeed Frederick Raphael recorded a talk. “In June 1967 an admiral clapped me on the back proclaiming ‘Well done you Jews’. Being an Englishman I was startled. … Yet what would he say to me now?” He was giving his talk in October 1982, in the wake of the Christian Druse militia massacre. Did Dahl hear it?
Lithgow gives a colossus of a performance which is essential. But everyone here rises to distinction. With Anna Watson lighting a summer through it, Bob Crowley’s set is a fantastic shabitat of a house in transition, much like Dahl’s relationship, also being redecorated.
Giant – which runs for two hours 20 – is both a magisterial debut and a landmark work for braving a terrain littered with – as Tom says – “booby traps… And surprise surprise – boom.” The Royal Court is used to them. This one though defuses as it goes.
Written by Mark Rosenblatt, Directed by Nicholas Hytner, Set Design Bob Crowley and Lighting Design Anna Watson, Sound Designer Alexandra Faye Braithwaite, Casting Director Arthur Carrington,
Associate Designer Jaimie Todd, Assistant Director Bellaray Bertran-Webb, Props Supervisor Lily Mollgaard, Dialect Hazel Holder, Hair, Wigs & Make-up Campbell Young Associates
Stage Manager Laura Hammond, DSM Andrew McCarthy, ASM Zoe Gledhill, Sound Operator Patrick O’Sullivan, Costume Alterations Anna Barcock, Dresser Adam Rainer
Till November 16th
