And now, guess what - surprise surprise, boom!

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...

Giant : The Harold Pinter Theatre

This was first on last year at the Royal Court Theatre (which I have yet to visit) and did very well, winning three Olivier awards including best new play and best actor (for John Lithgow). So when it transferred here for a limited run, I thought I'd pop along and see what all the fuss was about.

The play relates to a period in Roald Dahl's life where he had caused controversy by a book review which was certainly anti-Israel and many considered to be anti-Semitic - and so a few people come together to decide on how, if at all, things should be addressed. The main characters are Roald himself (John Lithgow), Felicity Crosland (Rachael Stirling) who is his fiance but they've been involved for many years including during Roald's first marriage, Tom Maschler (Elliott Levey) who is his UK publisher and Jessie Stone (Aya Cash) who is (I believe) a fictional representative from the US publisher. There's also the added complication that the last two characters are both Jewish, but have very different approaches to it.  

And it's all very interestingly done because it's clear early on that Roald is not a nice man, but there are multiple aspects to his horribleness and all the characters have different ways of dealing with them and different reasons for their approach. To balance things, Roald certainly also has charming aspects to his personality and various persuasive arguments which have a certain logic to them, but maybe shouldn't be pushed as far as Roald (and plenty of others) choose to do.

John Lithgow is great in this - a giant of a man both literally and metaphorically, looking to overshadow and diminish everyone around him through whatever means are available. And the others all play very well around him, attempting to deal with the situation in the way that they think is best, without necessarily having the slightest impact on his behaviour. Interestingly, one of the minor characters, the cook Hallie (Tessa Bonham Jones) has the least life experience in terms of dealing with people such as Dahl but comes up with probably the most effective method. I couldn't call out any of the actors in particular because they are all very believable - it's a great cast all round.

The setting and the direction of the play (by Nicholas Hytner) are all perfectly adequate, but the writing (by Mark Rosenblatt) is the star here - it could be set in an empty room with stationary actors and I suspect it would still be compelling. Considering the play deals with events in 1983, it's depressing how relevant a lot of the discussion is today - and is probably more so even than when the play originally opened last year. And it is, undoubtedly, a complex situation which the play doesn't attempt to resolve - I suspect plenty people came away thinking "well, I wouldn't have handled the situation quite like that", but, whilst plenty of the play is fictionalised, Roald's public actions at the time are clearly documented and he really went there.

I've not had the greatest success with a lot of my theatre visits so far this year (and I actually don't think I've got anything else booked), but it was nice to see something so well regarded delivering a great evening out. I'd certainly recommend it and there are still a few tickets left (the run ends on Saturday) but the cheapest are £225, with the top whack being £375. Which feels like it might be out of the price range of many people - but I paid £25 for my seat and it was worth every penny. 

The Fifth Step - a good play, well acted