As Roald Dahl, John Lithgow Is a Study in Monstrosity

For the most part, though, Lithgow’s Dahl is the sole repository of Rosenblatt’s perception, which is shifting and multivalent and, even in moments of extremity, sympathetic. He weaves in insight after insight. He hints at the way adolescent misogyny might have shaped Dahl’s nastiness, and the way that our deference — to the elderly, to the famous, even to the loved — can accelerate their radicalization. Audience members should therefore attend with their mental cudgels poised, prepared to be the opposition that Dahl doesn’t really encounter onstage.