Giant takes place on a scorching summer day in 1983, in an elegant and ramshackle English country house. Roald Dahl, world-renowned children’s authoris in a terrible mood. His body is wracked with pain, his new book, WITCHESis about to be published, and a public outcry over the review of his latest book – a scathing critique of Israel’s siege of Beirut a year ago, laced with anti-Semitic stereotypes – is in the air.
His fiancee and British Jewish publisher bob and weave around Dahl’s agile, capricious and turbulent energy. When a younger, female representative from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, his New York publisher, also Jewish, arrives to help seek forgiveness from their star author, the house slowly, unwittingly turns into an explosive battlefield.
Dahl, at first the provocateur, becomes the provoked, confronted by his American guest with hard truths about his revision and the differences between meaningful discourse and vicious prejudice. Behind the wall, Dahl must decide – to apologize or not. His final decision – a spectacularly anti-Semitic double-cross – is a matter of public record. Giant imagines the path that led this man to the devastating, hubristic decision that still tarnishes his legacy.
Mark RosenblattS ‘ Giant is powerful not because it denounces anti-Semitism, but because it understands how anti-Semitism survives. Most shows about prejudice comfort the audience with clarity. They assure us that we would have recognized it immediately. Giant does not provide such security.
The play treats anti-Semitism not as a defect in an otherwise civilized person, but as an ideology that can be fully integrated into one’s worldview and self-image. Dahl sees himself through the lens of honour, even chivalry – an RAF pilot at war, a man of unshakable integrity, a vanquisher of fascist evil. Giant shows how such a person can honestly believe himself to be principled, rational and courageous while at the same time expressing openly anti-Semitic ideas. This is much more disturbing – and perhaps more true.
The play examines anti-Semitism not as ignorance but as certainty. Dahl does not speak as a truth-seeker; he speaks like a man convinced that his intelligence exempts him from scrutiny. The show understands that prejudice often survives through vanity—through the seductive belief that one’s ideas are more powerful or more profound than others.
This is where the game gets really dangerous in the best sense of the word. It implicates not only the speaker, but the listeners around him. Friends who rationalize. Colleagues who deviate. Fans sharing art from the artist. Giant reveals anti-Semitism as a social choreography supported by silence, accommodation and prestige.
And yet the play never becomes didactic. He trusts the audience enough to let the discomfort do the work. There are no speeches designed to elicit applause. There is no easy redemption. No sentimental purge. Instead, the audience is left with the much more difficult task of recognizing how charisma can anesthetize moral judgment.
This may be the show’s greatest achievement as a tool against anti-Semitism. It does not simply condemn hate; studies his elegance, his intelligence, his fluidity and therefore his tenacity. In doing so, it destroys the comforting fantasy that culture itself is a defense against bigotry. Giant realizes something fundamental and terrifying: great artists are no more incapable of prejudice than brilliant scientists or shrewd politicians. Instead, their greatness often gives greater scope to their prejudices.
The result is not just a play for Roald Dahl. It’s a play about the lures of security, the perils of fame, and the eternal human temptation to mistake provocation for truth. Therefore the audience leaves arguing. And that’s why the show matters today.
