The virulent antisemitism of children’s author Roald Dahl is to be explored in a new play starring The Crown actor John Lithgow.
The production, called Giant, is set just before the publication of Dahl’s 1983 novel The Witches and will be performed at the Royal Court theatre in Chelsea, west London.
The synopsis reads: ‘The Witches is about to hit the shelves and Roald Dahl is making last-minute edits… but the outcry at his recent explicitly anti-Semitic article won’t die down.’
It refers to his infamous article in Literary Review, where he castigated ‘powerful American Jewish bankers’ who ‘utterly dominate the great financial institutions.’
The piece, a review of a book about Israel‘s 1982 war with Lebanon, added of Jewish people: ‘Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers.’
He also separately questioned why Jews destined for death in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust did not fight back.
In 2022, the Royal Court apologised ‘unreservedly’ to the Jewish community after naming a fictional, devious billionaire Hershel Fink in its play Rare Earth Mettle.
A review carried out by the theatre said the ‘name and aspects of the character’s personality could be seen as an anti-Semitic trope’.
The virulent antisemitism of children’s author Roald Dahl is to be explored in a new play starring The Crown actor John Lithgow
Lithgow, who starred as prime minister Winston Churchill in Netflix series The Crown, will portray Dahl
The Witches was the subject of controversy last year when it emerged that publishers Puffin – an imprint of Penguin Books – had made more than 50 changes to the original text.
Most prominently, the descriptions of the witches’ baldness was changed. A new line read: ‘There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.’
Puffin also changed passages in several other of Dahl’s novels.
Giant is to be directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner and has been written by Mark Rosenblatt.
Oscar-nominated Lithgow, who portrayed prime minister Winston Churchill in the first season of Netflix series The Crown, said he was ‘thrilled to be performing at the Royal Court where I’ve seen so much great work, stretching all the way back to the late 1960s,’ according to The Times.
Elliot Levey will portray Dahl’s Jewish publisher Tom Maschler.
In his comments about the Holocaust, Dahl wrote: ‘If I were in a line moving towards what we knew to be gas chambers, I’d rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me. But they were always so submissive.’
In an interview with the Independent newspaper after Israeli forced bombed Beirut, Dahl said: ‘I’m certainly anti-Israel and I’ve become anti-Semitic.’
He went on to tell the New Statesman: ‘There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity.
‘There’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them [the Jews] for no reason.’
In the 1970s, Dahl was reported as having been ejected from a country club for ranting about the number of Jews who were dining in his presence.
Dahl’s views upset many of his fans. Two girls, named Aliza and Tamar, wrote to him from San Francisco: ‘Dear Mr Dahl, We love your books but we have a problem — we are Jews! You don’t like us because we are Jews.
The production, called Giant, is set just before the publication of Dahl’s 1983 novel The Witches and will be performed at the Royal Court theatre in Chelsea, west London
‘That offends us. Can you please change your mind about what you said?’
Dahl’s friend Noel Coward described his books as ‘brilliant and the imagination fabulous’, but added: ‘Unfortunately there is in all of them an underlying streak of cruelty and macabre unpleasantness.’
His daughter Tessa declared of him: ‘Daddy gave joy to millions of children, but I was dying inside.’
He also cheated on his wife Patricia Neal, who dubbed him ‘Roald the Rotten’.
One of his American publishers, Robert Gottlieb, who was also Jewish, dropped him because ‘you have behaved to us in a way that is unmatched in my experience for overbearingness and utter lack of civility’.
However, his collection of novels for younger readers made him a much-loved national figure during his lifetime.
His other works included Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, James And The Giant Peach and The Twits.
Puffin caused uproar when they hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of Dahl’s texts to ensure the books ‘can continue to be enjoyed by all today’.
Giant is to be directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner (above) and has been written by Mark Rosenblatt
The move sparked fury among writers, with Sir Salman Rushdie branding it ‘absurd censorship’ and even Queen Camilla making remarks referencing the controversy.
She told an audience of authors at Clarence House: ‘Please remain true to your calling, unimpeded by those who may wish to curb the freedom of your expression or impose limits on your imagination.’
The criticism prompted Puffin to partially reverse its decision.
They announced the release of the Roald Dahl Classic Collection ‘to keep the author’s classic texts in print’ claiming they had ‘listened to the debate’.
However, the edited versions were still published last year.
In 2020, Dahl’s family apologised for his anti-Semitism. His grandchildren issued a statement saying his views were ‘incomprehensible to us’.
