by His bestselling children’s books have been turned into hit plays and musicals but now Roald Dahl’s personal life has inspired a new drama. John Lithgow, best known for the TV comedy 3rd Rock from the Sun, will star in Giant, written by Mark Rosenblatt and directed by Nicholas Hytner at London’s Royal Court theater this autumn.
“I am delighted to be performing at the Royal Court where I have seen so many masterpieces, stretching back to the late 1960s,” said Lithgow. “There’s no better place to unveil Mark Rosenblatt’s brilliant new play.”
Giant is set in 1983, shortly before the publication of Dahl’s novel The Witches, when it came under fire for its anti-semitic views expressed in the media. In an interview with the New Statesman that year, Dahl said: “There is a trait in the Jewish character that breeds hatred… Even a stoic like Hitler did not pick on them for no reason.” In 2020, the Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company issued an apology for the “permanent and understandable hurt” caused by such remarks.
Rosenblatt’s play begins in the evening at the Dahl family home. According to the publicity material, it offers “a complex portrait of a fiendishly charismatic icon” and “explores with dark humor the difference between reasoned opinion and dangerous rhetoric”. Giant is the first play by Rosenblatt, a writer-director whose short films include Ganef, which explores the impact of trauma and is inspired by stories from the aftermath of his family surviving the Holocaust.
Rosenblatt said: “Giant is my first play. When I was tearing my hair out writing it at my kitchen table, I never for a second imagined it would be on this monumental stage, and with this caliber of cast and creative team. It’s completely surreal and exciting to be signed up as part of David Byrne’s first season. I hope Giant will give Royal Court audiences an uncomfortable, funny, urgent and provocative night at the theatre.”
The Royal Court itself was at the center of an anti-Semitism controversy in 2021 over an offensive perpetuation in the play Rare Earth Mettle, featuring a manipulative billionaire billionaire named Hershel Fink. He changed the character’s name and later apologized for “the pain caused around the performance”.
Lithgow, a two-time Tony award winner, starred in the farce The Magistrate at London’s National Theater in 2012, under the artistic direction of Nicholas Hytner. Giant was previously developed by Hytner’s London Theater Company for the Bridge Theatre. His cast will include Elliot Levey as Dahl’s publisher Tom Maschler.
In 2023 it was revealed that Dahl had made hundreds of changes to the best-selling stories to remove language deemed inappropriate. Since then his novels have continued to inspire stage and screen productions including the impressive film Wonka, a prequel to Timothée Chalamet’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Wes Anderson’s short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar; and a musical version of The Witches at the National Theatre. The giant crocodile, which was first seen at Leeds Playhouse in December, will move to the Regent’s Park Open Air theater later this year.
Giant was announced on Monday as part of the first season of the Royal Court’s new artistic director, David Byrne, who was appointed in 2023 and previously led the New Diorama theatre. Byrne said: “More than just one season, this is a statement of what’s to come: a new generation of bold voices with big, obscure stories to tell; world-renowned artists clashing with insurgent new talent, lighting up some unmissable theater on our stage.” During the season, half of all seats in the theatre’s main space, the Jerwood Theater Downstairs, will be available for £22.50 or less and all tickets for Monday night performances will cost £15.
New plays of the season include Ben Whishaw in Margaret Perry’s adaptation of Maggie Nelson’s series of prose poems Bluets, directed by Katie Mitchell; Stewart Pringle’s comedy The Bounds, set in the world of medieval football; Expendable Emteaz Hussain, about a sexual abuse scandal; G Tife Kusoro which explores the romantic friendship of three Black boys; and Oliver Forsyth’s Brace Brace, examining the aftermath of a plane hijacking.
In a co-production with the London international theater festival, Nassim Soleimanpour and ECHO (Every Cold Hearted Oxygen) by Omar Elerian, they will see a different performer on stage every night, taking on a script they have never seen before. Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s disturbing comedy Lie Low, previously seen at Dublin Abbey and Traverse in Edinburgh, will be staged at the Royal Court alongside Sabrina Ali’s Dugsi Dayz, a Breakfast Club-style comedy about British-Somali girls in detention , previously seen at Celtic London. Rich Mix and the edge of Edinburgh.
