Review Roundup: GIANT Opens On Broadway Starring John Lithgow As Roald Dahl

Reviews are in for GIANT, the Olivier Award-winning play by Mark Rosenblatt, now on Broadway starring John Lithgow as Roald Dahl. Directed by Nicholas Hytner, the production is playing a limited 16-week engagement following its award-winning West End run, where it received three Olivier Awards.

The play centers on Dahl in the wake of controversy, examining questions of legacy, accountability, and public image through a dramatized portrait of the author during a pivotal moment in his life.

The Broadway company features John Lithgow, Aya Cash, Elliot Levey, Rachael Stirling, Stella Everett, and David Manis.

Helen Shaw, The New York Times: *CRITIC'S PICK* In Rosenblatt’s play, he is a BFG (Big Fractious Giant): The real man was 6-foot-6, while Lithgow is 6-foot-3. The director Nicholas Hytner keeps Dahl’s height in reserve, almost as if it’s a special effect. When the curtain rises, Lithgow is seated. He stands only after an eight-page scene at his dining-room work table, in which Dahl banters tetchily with his British publisher Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey) and fiancée, Liccy (Rachael Stirling), about contractual this and unimportant that.

Sara Holdren, Vulture : There was a moment late in Giant when I realized I could feel my own heartbeat, cranked up with anxiety. The waters the real Dahl waded into were boiling then and haven’t dropped a degree since. “Roald has spent years, long before I knew him, supporting desperate people, children especially, around the world,” Liccy protests to Jessie in a moment alone together. “Lebanon broke his heart.” Part of what gives Giant such voltage in a present context has to do not simply with what’s still happening in Gaza, but also with the phenomenon, much on display these days, of how a thinking person can break morally bad. Any trajectory away from humanity includes multiple moments of doubling down — forks in the road where the uglier path was taken. We dig our heels in; then, before we know it, we’ve dug our own grave.

Adam Feldman, Time Out New York: Nicholas Hytner’s bracing production ran in the West End in 2024 with the same four actors in the main roles, and they mostly work together as a smooth machine. Lithgow’s Dahl can be the soul of charm and playful wit when he’s being indulged, but the judgmental mean streak that enlivens his kids’ books (and especially his macabre short stories) can also make itself felt in real life when he feels challenged. The characters in his orbit know how to flatter and deflect when required, including his good-natured Kiwi housekeeper, Hallie (Stella Everett), and his hearty groundskeeper, Wally (David Manis). Cash’s performance is a somewhat different register—it feels more strained—and this hint of formal discontinuity works to the production’s advantage. Jessie is the outsider here, ill at ease from the beginning, and Dahl treats her with annoyed contempt, homing in on her points of vulnerability (as a young person, as a woman, as an American and especially as a Jew). The marvelous nastiness in his work, Giant suggests, extends from the fact that he can be a nasty piece of work himself.

Johnny Oleksinki, The New York Post: First off, the towering 80-year-old Tony winner bears a striking resemblance to the man, right out the box. But it’s Lithgow’s ability to be quiet and sweet and seconds later booming and scary that makes us squirm in our seats over our own feelings toward the writer. At times, we really do like him. The actor’s well-rounded, seismic Roald will be on the defensive, weaponizing his over-6-foot frame, massive intellect and huge temper. All giant, indeed. And right away he’ll snap into a kindhearted old man — the nurturing papa who Dahl readers dream is behind the prose. A camouflage, perhaps.

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: What we have here is, in essence, a furiously verbose debate play revolving around two very prescient questions. One is the degree to which criticism of the actions or the existence of the State of Israel inevitably slides into antisemitism, a debate that rages daily on the pages of this and other newspapers. The other is the extent to which the work of a great artist should be judged, admired or published without regard to their personal views. We still argue over that, too.

Daniel D'Addario, Variety: “Giant” is not without flaws; I would note without spoiling that, after a barnburning next-to-last sequence, it did not entirely stick its landing. (We’re meant to think that the bill is coming due for Dahl and his reputation is about to be torched, but his antisemitism, while known to this day, has seemed not to stick much to his legacy, and a few years after the events of this play, he did get offered an OBE by the Queen — which he turned down.) Rosenblatt, too, nails the back-and-forth of dialogue but, in his first attempt, can land, for fleeting but unwelcome moments, in a schematic place. The audience, for instance, will realize that Dahl is, yes, a child in an adult’s body about an hour before Cash’s character announces it. But its working through a series of debates that many potential viewers likely will have grown weary of — “separating the art from the artist” being only the first — is by and large done elegantly. “Giant” was conceived of years before the events of Oct. 7, 2023, a recent salvo in an age-old conflict, and yet its approach to geopolitical conversations feels up to the minute.

Brian Scott Lipton, Cititour: Small details aside, though, Rosenblatt succeeds (with some dramatic license) in painting the big picture: Dahl was a brilliant author and an awful human being. As for Lithgow, he succeeds in reminding us just how much of a theatrical giant he still is!

Juan A. Ramirez, Theatrely: Still, Giant spends some two hours playing is-he-or-isn’t-he before a mic drop finale that conclusively proves (by dramatizing an actual interview he gave to The New Statesman) that he is. Or, in the most undeservedly graceful reading, that his stubbornness so blinds him to consequence that he’d be willing to sound like he is. It’s a terrific character study. The issue is that Giant also spends those two hours playing cat and mouse with the broader question of whether anti-zionism equals antisemitism; Dahl being the only character to firmly decry the invasion and take issue with Israel’s governance. He dodges the main accusation by bringing up valid concerns over war, displacement and colonialism, which erroneously and irresponsibly intertwines the two thoughts as the play goes on. Closing the play on a confirmation of Dahl’s antisemitism, Rosenblatt bangs the gavel on the conflation: if Dahl was lying about the roots of his anti-zionism, surely so must others be guilty of that masquerade. For all its dramatic pleasures and gestures towards nuance, Giant winds up feeling like the latest example of a type of weaponized censorship that deems any criticism of governments as human-scale hate speech.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Only the gardener appears to have ever met Dahl before “Giant” begins. Bette Davis in “Dinner” delivers her only faceless performance. She knew that to create a character who could deal with a nutcase-boss she needed to ignore the tantrums, brush off the arrogance, be almost invisible. Davis should have given acting lessons to Levey and Stirling who react in outrage and horror to every mal mot delivered by Lithgow.

Matt Windman, amNY: At the center of it all is Lithgow, who delivers a commanding, carefully modulated performance. His Dahl is theatrical and domineering, by turns mischievous, bellicose, and quietly menacing — a man who delights in belittling those around him, needling them with pointed, often deliberately provocative questions. It is, in every sense, a gigantic performance — and a reminder of Lithgow’s ability to command a stage. The casting carries an added layer of irony: Lithgow is also set to play Dumbledore in HBO’s upcoming “Harry Potter” series, even as author J.K. Rowling remains a lightning rod for controversy.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Giant is a riveting and timely drama that reminds us of two central truths: the debate over Israel is a long and complicated one where no side comes out unsullied and great artists are often flawed humans with prejudices and blind spots as big as their talent.

Greg Evans, Deadline: Lithgow’s remarkable Olivier Award-winning performance – at this point in the far-from-over Broadway season he and Every Brilliant Thing‘s Daniel Radcliffe seem headed for a showdown – is a terrifically nuanced affair, as indeed are Rosenblatt’s play and the note-perfect direction of Nicholas Hytner. Any cast of costars would be deemed successful merely for holding its own, and this one does so much more than that. Giant, thrilling and abrasive, is full of rewards.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: I can see three main reasons why some theatergoers might want to sympathize with the antisemite at the center of the incendiary true incident being dramatized in “Giant.” The man, for one, is Roald Dahl, the children’s book author whose titles (including “Matilda” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) many have read and loved since childhood. Dahl is being portrayed in another virtuoso performance by John Lithgow, the fine eighty-year-old actor who has been able to locate the humanity in such insufferable villains as the Trinity Killer in Dexter, Lord Farquaad in Shrek and Roger Ailes in Bombshell. Then, some might agree with Dahl’s criticism of Israel, which he made four decades ago, but that is even more commonly heard in March of 2026 — that Israel has exhibited “appalling behavior” and exerted “powerful influence over the US treasury [and] over the presidency.”

Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: But the quibbles hardly matter considering Lithgow’s towering performance, which blends warmth and ugliness in fascinating fashion. The veteran actor, now 80 years old, has never been better, providing such a compelling central figure that, despite the fine performances by the rest of the ensemble, Giant sometimes has the feel of a one-person play.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: What remains to be trumpeted about this nevertheless impressive import with its flawless cast (Stella Everett and David Manis, among them) is praise for set designer Bob Crowley. The recipient over the years of many awards, he does his magic again with a giant Giant set, a depiction of Gipsy House, Dahl’s family home in Missenden, Buckinghamshire.

Average Rating: 76.0%