That desire shows no signs of letting up. “It’s time to consider: How do I spend my last decade?” Lithgow says. “In the last few years, I’ve grown into my role as a character actor…old men dealing with these primal, mortal dilemmas.” Churchill was prime minister until he was 80, he notes; Roger Ailes, whom Lithgow played in the film Bombshell (2019), faced sexual harassment allegations at 76; and now Dahl takes his place among this roster.
Though Dahl is beloved as a children’s writer, his reputation has been colored by debate about whether you can separate a man’s art from his personality. His books, including James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The BFG (1982), and Matilda (1988), have been adored by generations. Perhaps more than any other author, he shifted the morality tale of midcentury children’s literature to something more cheekily clever. His sensibility could veer into savagery; villains were often violent and hateful. And more seriously, he made statements that were antisemitic. In 2020 his family apologized for his antisemitic opinions, but he never did.
Giant, which won three Olivier Awards last year (including best new play), depicts a lunch in 1983 at Dahl’s home in the English village of Great Missenden. There, a representative from his American publisher (an invented figure played by Cash) and managing director of his British publisher, Tom Maschler (a real-life figure played by Elliot Levey), are meeting Dahl and his fiancée, Felicity “Liccy” Crosland (Rachael Stirling), to attempt to head off a disaster caused by a book review Dahl has written concerning Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
The lunch is imagined, but the review and the contentious opinions expressed by Dahl are real. In one line, quoted in the play, Dahl writes: “Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers.” A furor erupted. In Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl (2010), his biographer Donald Sturrock describes how even Crosland was shocked by Dahl’s excess. “His rhetoric, though sympathetic to the Palestinians, got the better of him,” Sturrock writes.
The first draft of Giant was written before the attacks of October 7, 2023, but the ongoing hostilities in the Middle East make the play’s historical arguments—about the rights of Israel, about the rights of Palestinians—seem frighteningly relevant. The strength of the play has less to do with its topicality, however, and more to do with its nuanced examination of bigotry and of Dahl’s generosity and wit, as well as his anger and venom. “What makes someone translate the world into literature, drama, or music isn’t the faculty that makes them a decent human being,” says Hytner.
“It’s an unbelievable role,” Lithgow says. “Like red meat…. There is this canard that Dahl didn’t actually like children. But, whether he loved them or not, he was passionate about entertaining them.” For Lithgow, the departure point was to recognize Dahl’s life was full of tragedy: His father died when he was very young; he was sent to boarding schools where he was abused; his first wife, the actor Patricia Neal, had a stroke and he nursed her back to health. A son suffered brain damage in a freak accident, and his seven-year-old daughter Olivia died from a complication of measles. “These terrible, terrible losses,” in Lithgow’s words, shaped his view of the world.