The week in theatre: Giant; Roots; Look Back in Anger – review

Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court; Almeida, London
John Lithgow is magnificent as Roald Dahl in Nicholas Hytner’s production of an extraordinary debut play; Morfydd Clark finds her voice in a Wesker revival; and a John Osborne staging is a step backwards

Here in one evening is the case for the stage. An incendiary subject, an extraordinary debut play, a fleet production, top-notch acting. Everything on the wing. At the centre of Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant towers John Lithgow, magnificent as Roald Dahl: impassioned and soured, mischievous and bullying.

Tall and stooped, his long face a magic lantern over which flits moues and pursings and winces, he pronounces the name of his American publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) with the “Girooooux” contemptuously extended, as if it were a French affectation. In the course of the play he becomes terrifying, yet the monstrousness is inflected by the keen affection of his no-flies future wife: Rachael Stirling brings poised intelligence – askance but not arch – to a finely written part.

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