Giant
Opening Night: March 23, 2026
Theater: Music Box Theatre
Website: gianttheplay.com
A world-famous children’s author under threat. A battle of wills in the wake of a scandal. And one chance to make amends. Following an acclaimed West End run and three Olivier Awards, GIANT tells the story of Roald Dahl and the true scandal that shook his legacy. Tony, Golden Globe, and Olivier Award-winner John Lithgow (Conclave, The Crown) reprises his extraordinary, career-defining performance as Roald Dahl. Written by Mark Rosenblatt, directed by Nicholas Hytner, and designed by Bob Crowley.
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March 23, 2026
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.
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March 23, 2026
Nicholas Hytner directs a riveting production that feels much shorter than its two-hour, 15-minute run time, with the supporting cast rising to the high bar Lithgow sets.
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March 23, 2026
Mark Rosenblatt’s play Giant is brilliantly structured, quite funny and, in Nicholas Hytner’s production, superbly acted by a cast led by John Lithgow. I wish it didn’t irk me the way it did… For all its dramatic pleasures and gestures towards nuance, Giant winds up feeling like the latest example of a type of weaponized censorship that deems any criticism of governments as human-scale hate speech.
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March 23, 2026
It’s a credit to the direction of Nicholas Hytner — of “War Horse,” “The History Boys” and other magisterial slices of Brittania — that Lithgow’s titanic performance doesn’t unbalance the show. The actor relishes all aspects of Dahl’s childishness, and the humanity within the beast emerges in small moments.
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March 23, 2026
But it’s Lithgow’s ability to be quiet and sweet and seconds later booming and scary that makes us squirm in our seats over our own feelings toward the writer. At times, we really do like him. The actor’s well-rounded, seismic Roald will be on the defensive, weaponizing his over-6-foot frame, massive intellect and huge temper. All giant, indeed. And right away he’ll snap into a kindhearted old man — the nurturing papa who Dahl readers dream is behind the prose. A camouflage, perhaps.
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March 23, 2026
Lithgow — so nimble and charismatic and then suddenly so imposing, with no aversion to the grotesque — knows how to bring out the insecurity that almost always festers at the center of any performatively self-certain action. His Dahl is constantly goading people, driving them right up to the edge of their tolerance.
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March 23, 2026
Lithgow’s portrayal of Dahl is ultimately fearsome, but the play’s moral complexity marks it as more than a portrait of the artist as a difficult man. It’s a provocative study in the ongoing challenge of asking giants to watch their step.
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March 23, 2026
Lithgow’s remarkable Olivier Award-winning performance – at this point in the far-from-over Broadway season he and Every Brilliant Thing‘s Daniel Radcliffe seem headed for a showdown – is a terrifically nuanced affair, as indeed are Rosenblatt’s play and the note-perfect direction of Nicholas Hytner. Any cast of costars would be deemed successful merely for holding its own, and this one does so much more than that. Giant, thrilling and abrasive, is full of rewards.
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March 23, 2026
Rosenblatt is too good at his job. He’s only about 20 minutes into his play and he already delivers a great ending. Unfortunately, there’s no place for the drama to go for the next two hours.
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March 23, 2026
Still, “Giant” is a play that invites — and perhaps demands — engagement. It is smart, timely, and anchored by a commanding central performance, but ultimately more compelling in its questions than in its dramatic execution. “Giant” offers no easy answers about art, artist, or accountability — only the uneasy certainty that the questions aren’t going away.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2026
Unsurprisingly, the best scenes are when Lithgow’s Dahl and Cash’s Stone blast away at each other. Both of those leading performances are riveting.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2026
If being scarily topical was enough to make a play great, Giant — a new Broadway drama about famed British children’s author Roald Dahl and antisemitism, starring John Lithgow — would truly measure up. But it takes more and, as is, Mark Rosenblatt’s play falls a tad short. While admirably smart and ably directed by Nicholas Hytner, Giant shrinks from the nagging fact that it goes in circles rather than building in gripping dramatic fashion.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2026
Giant has its own case of gigantism, of sustained talkiness. Dahl hurls his antisemitism tirades so often that the cumulative point lands more than sufficiently during the two acts. Eventually, they’re gratuitous. Actually, the truly stunning dramatic high point occurs only grim moments before an ominous first-act blackout. It’s achieved with one weaponized word (no spoiler coming) blasted at the increasingly assailed Jessie.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 24, 2026
Abrasive, abusive, manipulative, irascible, contemptuous, egotistical: Dahl was a man of myriad flaws and few graces—almost all warts, like a malignant creature from one of his books. Mr. Lithgow, under the unerringly precise direction of the veteran Nicholas Hytner, does not shy away from any of his repellent aspects, bringing each to bruising and, thankfully, often scabrously funny life in a performance that’s a mesmerizing highlight of the theater season.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2026
The quibbles hardly matter considering Lithgow’s towering performance, which blends warmth and ugliness in fascinating fashion. The veteran actor, now 80 years old, has never been better, providing such a compelling central figure that, despite the fine performances by the rest of the ensemble, Giant sometimes has the feel of a one-person play.
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