Last night, Stuart and I went to see Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre (in glitzy central London, right off Leicester Square).
It's a very well staged, beautifully acted reclamation project — an attempt to wring gold from the morally dubious ore that is Roald Dahl.
Let’s be clear: I’ve never liked Dahl. Not as a child, not as an adult. Even before his antisemitism was widely known about and discussed, his stories struck me as smug and mean-spirited. Now, with the context of his public bigotry, that sour note is impossible to ignore.
And yet - here we are. In this bold, slick production, the cast-iron cast turns literary lead into theatrical gold.
The excellent John Lithgow as Dahl, the fabulous Aya Cash @maybeayacash, brilliant Elliot Levey @elliotlevey, great Rachael Stirling @rachael.stirling.77, funny Richard Hope @richardhopeuk, and super Tessa Bonham Jones @tessabonhamjones all deliver performances that transcend the source material, injecting humanity and complexity where Dahl offered only caricature in his works.
Credit to Sir Nicholas Hytner @hytner and the team at @haroldpintertheatre, who have transformed their space into a broken down domestic dystopia, both intimate and strange. It's a stylish triumph, even if the ghost of the original author looms a little too large.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
