What happens in Giant
The play unfolds over a single afternoon in summer 1983 at Roald Dahl's home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. Dahl is shortly to publish a new children's novel, The Witches, but his career — and his reputation — are under immediate threat. Two months earlier, the Literary Review published his review of God Cried, a picture book about the Israeli siege of West Beirut. The review contained explicitly antisemitic statements that have triggered an international scandal.
Across the afternoon, Dahl's British publisher Tom Maschler (Jonathan Cape) and his American publisher Jessie Stone confront him directly. Both publishers are Jewish. Both are under pressure to drop him. Both want him to issue a public apology. Dahl — wounded, ill, charismatic, unrepentant — refuses. His fiancée Felicity Crosland and his handyman Wally Saunders move through the household as the confrontation escalates. The play closes without resolution, with the question of whether Dahl can be saved from himself left open.
The play's title refers obliquely to Dahl's enormous physical stature, his global reputation as a literary giant, and — implicitly — the question of how cultural giants should be held accountable for what they say in public.
The historical events behind Giant
In August 1983, Roald Dahl published a review of God Cried — a picture book by Tony Clifton and Catherine Leroy about the 1982 Israeli siege of West Beirut — in the Literary Review. The review contained statements about Jewish people that were widely condemned as antisemitic. Dahl gave several subsequent interviews that doubled down on the position rather than retracting it. The scandal damaged his standing with American publishers and reviewers, though it did not derail his commercial success: The Witches was published later in 1983 to enormous sales.
The play dramatises a fictional confrontation between Dahl and his publishers in the wake of the article. The characters of Tom Maschler (a real figure — Jonathan Cape's editorial director, Dahl's UK publisher) and Jessie Stone (a composite figure representing Dahl's US publishers) are used to stage the moral argument the historical Dahl largely refused to have in public.
In recent years the Dahl estate has issued formal apologies for his antisemitic statements, and several editions of his work have been edited for contemporary publication. Giant arrives at this question without prescribing an answer — its dramatic force is in the irresolution.
From the Royal Court to Broadway
Giant premiered at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 20 September 2024 under Nicholas Hytner's direction. The run was the first time both Rosenblatt (as writer) and Hytner (as director) had worked at the Royal Court. Every available ticket — bar the famous Monday-night rush seats — sold before the first preview. The West End transfer to the Harold Pinter Theatre was announced in November 2024, ran from 26 April to 2 August 2025, and was followed by a Broadway transfer in 2026 with Lithgow reprising. The production was produced in the West End by Brian and Dayna Lee, Stephanie Kramer and Nicole Kramer, Josh Fiedler and Robyn Goodman.
