‘Giant’ Broadway Review: John Lithgow as a Venomous Roald Dahl Animates a Staggering Production
8 / 10
“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.
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