Giant - Cinema Review

Review by Giada

Giant: when theatre outlives the stage.

John Lithgow in Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Photo by Johan Persson

Giant, the debut play by Mark Rosenblatt, starring John Lithgow as the writer Roald Dahl, has enjoyed relentless success. Following its West End and Broadway transfers, this cinematic release marks a significant first: the first major cinema rollout of a Royal Court production. With the filmed version arriving in cinemas worldwide later this month, I would urge anyone who, like me, missed the opportunity to see it live to find no further excuses.

As something of a theatre fundamentalist, I have always found the experience of watching a play on a screen a little jarring. It requires a kind of imaginative compromise, a willingness to inhabit an awkward middle ground between the immediacy of live performance and the intimacy of cinema. But if you are willing to make the leap, the rewards are considerable. I can think of two reasons why.

First, although I find something profoundly uplifting in theatre's intrinsically contingent nature, recording and screening a production gives us access to something that would otherwise disappear forever. And Giant, in all its force and complexity, deserves to remain with us a little longer.

Secondly, there are the close-ups. From a stationary seat, sometimes twenty feet or more from the stage, the audience has relatively little control over where to direct its attention. Focusing on the bigger picture can come at the expense of the smallest details. Cinema restores some of that intimacy. I still remember feeling terrified watching James Norton suffer his way through A Little Life. And when the actors' performances are so intimately bound up with a production's success, as they are here, being allowed a closer look is an exciting prospect. John Lithgow and Elliot Levey, whose performances earned them Olivier Awards for Best Actor and Best Actor in a Supporting Role respectively, are particularly deserving of that attention.

Inspired by a real-life controversy, Giant takes us back to 1983, when Dahl published a review of Tony Clifton's God Cried, an illustrated account of the Israeli siege of West Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon War. His review went considerably further than a critique of Israeli military action, making claims about Jewish complicity in historical atrocities and questioning the legitimacy of the Israeli state itself.
Rosenblatt imagines the encounter between Dahl and his two publishers, Tom Maschler and Jessie Stone, as the author's latest work, The Witches, is about to reach the shelves. The controversy surrounding his previous public statements threatens both his reputation and the book's commercial prospects. The two publishers ultimately come together in an attempt to persuade Dahl to acknowledge the harm caused by his words, issue an apology and salvage what remains of his public standing. Their objectives may be aligned, but their approaches to the dilemma could hardly be more different.

Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey), Dahl's British publisher, occupies the familiar position of the supposedly reasonable middle ground. Elliot Levey plays him as measured, pragmatic and, at least on the surface, detached. He presents himself as a man without strong opinions, a voice of reason who can see both sides of an argument without committing himself to either. Yet this apparent neutrality conceals a more complicated discomfort with his own heritage and identity. A Jewish man who left Nazi Germany by train as a child, Tom seems strangely detached from the very Jewish experience that Dahl's remarks have brought into question. Dahl turns Tom's simple request to 'just apologise' into a question of moral courage and loyalty. But Tom remains remarkably unshaken, almost indifferent, as though he knows better than to engage with someone who has no intention of listening. Perhaps this is precisely why he is such a likeable character: because, in his apparent reasonableness, he exposes something of our own cowardice. His moderation consists, at least in part, of refusing to take a position. His moral evasion is an attempt to preserve the relationship, and perhaps his own sense of decency, without confronting the substance of what Dahl has said.

.John Lithgow, Elliot Levey and Aya Cash in Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Photo by Johan Persson

Jessie Stone (Aya Cash), the American publisher, is a rather different proposition. Refusing to accept the terms of this supposedly neutral conversation, she exposes herself to Dahl's ritual of humiliation. As though being made to stand her ground were punishment enough, she finds herself questioned not only in her professional judgement and her right to speak, but also in her roles as a mother and a Jewish woman living in America. It is a battle she seems destined to lose, yet by choosing to fight it she exposes the antisemitism beneath Dahl's convictions: the kind that can hide beneath seemingly political arguments, particularly when criticism of Israel slides into a questioning of Jewish identity and collective responsibility.

And this is where Giant becomes particularly interesting, and particularly difficult. The distinction between criticism of Israeli government policy and antisemitism should be relatively straightforward in principle. One must be able to criticise Israel, its government and its military actions without that criticism automatically being dismissed as antisemitic. Yet the country's undeniable popular support for its government and its actions can make the distinction increasingly uncomfortable to navigate. Equally, the language of political criticism cannot become a convenient shield for antisemitic assumptions or collective accusations against Jewish people.

Dahl, Tom and Jessie each blur these distinctions in their own way. Their arguments are never entirely detached from their personal histories, identities and experiences: no one enters the room as a neutral observer, and no argument exists independently of the person making it.

Rosenblatt is not particularly interested in offering an easy resolution. Nor should he be. The play does not need to tell us who is right and who is wrong. Its subject is, rather, the moral and personal cost of having to negotiate these questions in the company of someone who refuses to acknowledge the damage he has caused. What makes the writing all the more remarkable is that this is Rosenblatt's debut play. After directing for much of his career, he arrives as a playwright with a work of considerable ambition: heated, intellectually demanding and, unironically, timely. Dahl himself is a fascinating, if deeply uncomfortable, character. By presenting him as a man haunted by pain and by the ghosts of his past, Rosenblatt avoids reducing him to a straightforward villain. There is something almost childlike about him, both in his imagination and in his temperament. He is stubborn and capricious, occasionally disarming, and possessed of a moral certainty that seems to leave very little room for anybody else's perspective. His is an absolute moral integrity, but one defined entirely on his own terms. There is an entitlement in his convictions, a certainty that he alone can determine what is acceptable, what is offensive and what deserves forgiveness.

This is ultimately what makes Giant so effective. Through the voices of its characters, Rosenblatt brings together questions of freedom of speech and thought, the separation of art from artist, moral responsibility and the increasingly fraught boundary between political criticism and prejudice. Giant, ultimately, is an ode to reason.

Giant plays in cinemas in the UK and internationally from the 18th November 2026. For screenings and more information, visit https://www.giantincinemas.com/

Aya Cash and John Lithgow in Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Photo by Johan Persson