GIANT Reviews
GIANT Reviews
GIANT Reviews#7
Posted: 3/24/26 at 12:08am
DTLI Consensus: John Lithgow gives a towering, monstrous lead performance in this timely debut play by Mark Rosenblatt.
11 positive (including the NYT), 2 mixed, 1 negative.
https://didtheylikeit.com/shows/giant-2/
GIANT Reviews#8
Posted: 3/24/26 at 12:25am
77 on Broadway Scorecard, recommended (strong choice).
“Critics praise Lithgow's towering performance as antisemitic author Roald Dahl in this timely, incendiary drama, though some question the play's structure. The production provokes vital debate about separating art from artist."
https://broadwayscorecard.com/show/giant
GIANT Reviews#9
Posted: 3/29/26 at 11:26am
1 Minute Critic - 4/5 stars
The man who wrote Matilda called Jewish people "barbarous murderers." John Lithgow plays him on Broadway and somehow makes it even more complicated. Is it a giant question worth asking? We think so. Full review here.
Understudy Joined: 2/29/24
GIANT Reviews#10
Posted: 5/2/26 at 11:48pm
Caught the matinee of this today and, while the audience ate it up, I thought it was a huge disappointment. By the end of act one, it seemed like another boring bit of bothsidesism with nothing new to say. Then at intermission I caught the playwright's note that mentions which two things in the play are not an invention of the author. A play that starts where Giant ends might have interesting points to raise, but as it is now it's just deck-stacking nonsense that takes nearly all of the nuance out of any conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/9/04
GIANT Reviews#11
Posted: 5/3/26 at 8:28am
I have to agree. I thought it superbly acted but ultimately thought "there's no there there" and just found it as tedious as a scroll on instagram these days.
GIANT Reviews#12
Posted: 5/3/26 at 8:57am
I agree with the two posts above me. I saw this last night and found it exhaustingly boring. The acting was alright, but I kept waiting for John Lithgow’s performance to evolve into something more, and it never did. I really don’t get all the fuss or critical love heaped on this.
Updated On: 5/3/26 at 08:57 AM
GIANT Reviews#13
Posted: 5/10/26 at 12:42pm
Had to sit on this for a bit, and even checked out the script from the library afterwards to give it a re-read, but I actually liked this quite a lot.
Probably the biggest surprise is that it seems to posit that Dahl wasn't so much a pure-blooded antisemite as he was an insecure, paranoid bully desperate to use any tools he could get his hands on to force the people around him to prove their devotion to him. The ending, in particular, grabbed me, not because of the nasty and apparently verbatim language he used, but because he's overtly doing it as a way to challenge his wife. "Would you still love me if I stabbed you?", basically, and we know that she would, because we know that she married him. It's an ending straight out of one of Dahl's own stories.
Lithgow does give a terrific performance that really elevates the text and I was extremely entertained watching him constantly ferreting out and exploiting weaknesses. This is essentially a play about a group of people cornering a rat, which is an odd dynamic and I can understand why some would find it repetitive or static. Certainly, it absolutely does not (in its present state) necessitate two whole acts, and would probably work better as an 80-minute one-act. People keep being shuffled in and out of the room, and the use of the two servant characters felt particularly uninspired.
The process by which provocateurs become lonely, hateful monsters (often seeming to beg for external judgement) is fascinating to me, though, so I think I was primed to enjoy this. I was also intrigued by the differences in viewpoint between the American and British Jewish characters. When Jessie asks Tom where he would go if Jews were banned from England, he blithely replies, "Provence", which feels like a pointed criticism of the way that Americans isolate themselves, and how it leads to a hysterical and apocalyptic mindset. There's an intriguing subject to be explored there.
GIANT Reviews#14
Posted: 5/10/26 at 12:59pm
Dahl burrowing in, lashing out, and doubling down when challenged really strikes me as similar to modern writers like JK Rowling and Graham Linehan, who have devolved from creatives into full-time hatemongers addicted to social media. Roald Dahl would probably have tens of thousands of tweets arguing with random people on the internet if he were alive today.
It's somewhat unfortunate that this play really has nothing interesting to say about Israel/Palestine. It's not the point, but it's such a hot button issue that it feels weird to have it as a prop to get to a character study on this fascinatingly flawed person. Not sure how they could have averted this though, given the real facts of Dahl's life.
GIANT Reviews#15
Posted: 5/10/26 at 2:17pm
Charley Kringas Inc said: "When Jessie asks Tom where he would go if Jews were banned from England, he blithely replies, "Provence", which feels like a pointed criticism of the way that Americans isolate themselves, and how itleads to a hysterical and apocalyptic mindset. There's an intriguing subject to be explored there."
Tom is rather posh but it’s also a running gag Rosenblatt uses to deflate Dahl’s and others’ idea of Jewish stereotypes. When Dahl makes a reference to Golders Green as the place where the London Jewish community lives, Tom corrects him by relocating the reference to the very wealthy neighborhood of Kensington.
I read the play as well and I agree it’s good.
GIANT Reviews#16
Posted: 5/10/26 at 2:24pm
Ptero2 said: "It's somewhat unfortunate that this play really has nothing interesting to say about Israel/Palestine. It's not the point, but it's such a hot button issue that it feels weird to have it as a prop to get to a character study on this fascinatingly flawed person. Not sure how they could have averted this though, given the real facts of Dahl's life."
Israel/Palestine is at the center of the play, I think. Are diasporic Jews associated with the actions of Israel whether they/we like it or not.
GIANT Reviews#17
Posted: 5/10/26 at 8:27pm
I too found Lithgow's performance to be quite extraordinary and found the play reasonably successful in its text despite all of the criticisms that I have heard here....many of which I agree with. But what really drove me crazy was the set! What really was the justification for setting the play in a home that was under such renovation that it appeared uninhabitable! It was not only needlessly unattractive to look at but seemed illogical as a habitable home. I kept wondering as I watched that ugly tarp extending the whole width of the living room how in the heck is this place even standing! It takes place in the english countryside and just as easily as the cast moved in and out between the interior and exterior so would all manner of creatures great and small sharing their home. It drove me crazy and I wish someone could explain what was the value in this set choice that made no architectural or habitable sense to me. Ahhhhh. I'm glad that I got that off my chest after weeks of rumination:)
GIANT Reviews#18
Posted: 5/11/26 at 2:46am
I lived through a UK home reno for about six months that looked almost exactly like the set, plastic tarp and all. It's not all that unusual. You make do with what you have.
GIANT Reviews#19
Posted: 5/11/26 at 3:21am
Ptero2 said: "Dahl burrowing in, lashing out, and doubling down when challenged really strikes me as similar to modern writers like JK Rowling and Graham Linehan, who have devolved from creatives into full-time hatemongers addicted to social media. Roald Dahl would probably have tens of thousands of tweets arguing with random people on the internet if he were alive today.
It's somewhat unfortunate that this play really has nothing interesting to say about Israel/Palestine. It's not the point, but it's such a hot button issue that it feels weird to have it as a prop to get to a character study on this fascinatingly flawed person. Not sure how they could have averted this though, given the real facts of Dahl's life."
I strongly agree with your first point and respectfully disagree with the second one. While Dahl can be written off as a hateful antisemite or a nasty provocateur, his critiques of Israel and of Jews in general cannot be dismissed so easily, especially as Israel is bombing Lebanon right now. While Dahl’s criticisms and remarks about Jews stem in part from a different time, those criticisms have come around again. We see, hear and read them all the time, from left and right, and they have had a dramatic impact on Jews in America. It is especially true of liberal Jews. The play may be set in the early 1980s, but the explosive audience reaction to Jessie’s monologue that closes the first act resonates with many because it reflects their emotions today.
The play does meander a bit in the second act, and that is a weakness. But Lithgow, as Dahl, probing and snapping at his guests - then doubling down with a ‘naughty boy’ expression of his face at the end - elevates the material in a remarkable way.
GIANT Reviews#20
Posted: 5/12/26 at 4:05pm
I really liked this one, I believe the play raises more questions and provokes you more than it is interested in giving you answers.
And even tho is pretty clear you don't side with Dahl, the fact that is John Lithgow playing kinda makes you try to understand why such a big figure would say things like that.
The fact that it is about Israel makes everything even more current.
Aya Cash was a surprise, that final monologue at Act I was superb, and I can't believe Lithgow (at 81 years old) had to do that cellphone call 8x a week, some of those phraes are pure evil.
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