“And are you Jewish?”
That’s the first, short, tightening of the screw in a new Broadway play about children’s author Roald Dahl, called Giant. The show, recently brought over from London, takes place in 1983, in the makeshift dining room at Gipsy House, Dahl’s countryside estate.
Dahl—played by John Lithgow, is about to publish his novel, The Witches. He’s already had huge hits in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, and The Twits. And The Witches is set to be one, too—except that Dahl has just published a review of a book of photographs about the war in Lebanon called God Cried. In it, he gives his assessment of Jews: “Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much pitied victims to barbarous murderers.” He then wonders: “Must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?” Outrage from the public ensues.
