A few weeks after I wrote a May column about Roald Dahl and cancel culture, I found myself in a West End theatre watching “Giant,” a powerful play that explores that very issue.
I’m known to analyze things to death so it’s no surprise that I love stage plays where all the action takes place in one room. By the end, the audience has ceased to be mere observers, almost becoming part of the story, which is why such plays are sometimes claustrophobic.
Originated brilliantly by American actor John Lithgow, “Giant’s” Dahl embodies everything that people love and hate about the author, from his creativity to his cantankerousness.
It is the early ‘80s and Dahl’s anti-Semitic article in the wake of the First Lebanon War has been published. His US-based publishing house has sent an editor to meet with Dahl and his UK-based editor.
As the play unfolds, all of the cast (which also includes his new wife, their housekeeper and gardener) confront Dahl and themselves about their prejudices — and so does the audience.
Every modern anti-Jewish trope is verbalized, from Jews being miserly to Israel being Nazi. As a Jewish person in the audience, I felt both vindicated and uncomfortable. The latter not only due to hearing ugly words about my people, but because the play, through Dahl himself, puts that question out there.
After going multiple rounds with his (fictitious) Jewish US editor, he asks her how she will be able to continue reading his stories to her son. For the first time I wondered, Will I be able to continue compartmentalizing Dahl’s anti-Semitism?
This is what theater should do — and it’s incredible that Mark Rosenblatt has achieved this as a debut playwright. Even more remarkable? He wrote “Giant” prior to Oct. 7, 2023.
While Dahl is the antagonist of the piece, each character’s behavior triggers the very questions the Jewish community is currently grappling with, among them:
How worthwhile is continued confrontation in the face of intransigence? Can it do more harm than good?
How expendable is our Jewish identity in the pursuit of goals related to other meaningful aspects of our identity?
With whom are we willing to work because we have calculated the benefit as overall higher than the cost — even if the cost offends our morality?
No spoilers (and I hope it comes to the US), but the denouement is shocking, and allows no escape from “Giant’s” challenge to society — and to ourselves.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com
© IJN 2025
