The ferocity of John Lithgow‘s explosive performance as Roald Dahl – the children’s author as reviled by some as he was beloved by others – seems to show itself right from the start of Mark Rosenblatt’s extraordinary play Giant, opening on Broadway tonight. Our first glimpse of Lithgow’s Dahl catches the writer in full curmudgeon mode as he sits, stews and grouses over the latest galleys of his upcoming book The Witches.
But even at Dahl’s grouchiest in these early scenes, Lithgow barely hints at the vitriol and monstrousness to come when the famed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and Fantastic Mr. Fox, among so many others, fully unleashes the hate, rot and bigotry eating him alive. And when that comes, no one will be spared.
Lithgow’s remarkable Olivier Award-winning performance – at this point in the far-from-over Broadway season he
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