Two hours of yakking about Israel. That’s all you get from Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Endless wittering laced with venomous bigotry. The year is 1983 and the celebrated kiddie author, Roald Dahl, has kicked up a massive stink by denouncing Israel for attacking Lebanon in late 1982. His latest scribble, The Witches, is about to be published in America but a handful of bookshops are threatening to boycott his work. Tom and Jessie, two executives from Dahl’s publishing firm, visit him at home and beg him to withdraw his anti-Semitic rant. Dahl refuses because he loathes the Jews, hates Israel and endorses all the usual myths about Jewish control of politics and finance.
The first act of this static, scruffy play is a tiresome debate about Israel’s existence that culminates in a screaming match. Act Two is a disorganised attempt to tie up the loose threads laid out in Act One. The playwright, Mark Rosenblatt, amplifies the drama with a cast of six which includes three superfluous cameos. A chirpy blonde scullery maid from New Zealand who knows how to chop lettuce. A thick odd-job man, called Wally, who keeps shuffling in and out and saying things like ‘I don’t know much’ in an oo-arr accent. And a fawning bombshell of a girlfriend who hopes to marry the rich old scribe.
The substance of the play is borne by the publishing executives, both Jewish, who discuss the Middle East with Dahl over lunch. Jessie (Aya Cash) is a shrill hysteric who represents militant Zionism. Tom (Elliot Levey) is a vacillating enabler who stands for prosperity, silence and an easy life.
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