"Giant," Mark Rosenblatt's play about Roald Dahl's documented antisemitism, continues its limited 16-week Broadway engagement with John Lithgow in the title role. The play dramatizes a single afternoon in 1983 when Dahl, at the height of his fame as a children's author, was confronted about antisemitic statements he had made publicly and in his writing. [1]

Reviews have been strong. The New York Post called Lithgow "superb." [2] The Chicago Tribune reviewed it as a genuine reckoning rather than a biographical portrait. The New York Times noted the production avoids reducing Dahl to a cartoon villain, instead portraying him as a "rounded character" — which has itself become a point of controversy. [3]

The audience response has been polarized. On X, some Jewish theater critics called it essential viewing. Others questioned whether a play that humanizes a man who said openly antisemitic things in print serves accountability or merely aestheticizes it. The playwright Rosenblatt has said the point is not to excuse Dahl but to understand how brilliance and bigotry coexist in the same person.

The play's resonance extends beyond Dahl. In a cultural moment when institutions from the Mellon Foundation to the NEA are navigating the politics of artistic legacy, "Giant" asks a question that has no comfortable answer: what do you do with the art when you know what the artist believed?

The play is scheduled to close in June. No extension has been announced.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles