John Lithgow as Broadway’s ‘Giant’ hits an inflection point after opening night
john lithgow is now front and center on Broadway in Giant, a Mark Rosenblatt drama that places Roald Dahl’s public backlash at the heart of the story—an inflection point amplified by the show’s opening-night arrival at the Music Box Theatre in New York (ET).
What happens when John Lithgow leads a London-to-Broadway transfer?
Giant has reached Broadway after a U. K. world premiere in London’s West End last year, with director Nicholas Hytner and star John Lithgow reprising their work in the transfer. The production’s Broadway opening night was March 23 (ET) at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre, drawing notable attendees including Morgan Spector, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Paulson, Schele Williams, Sara Bareilles, Bobby Cannavale, Blythe Danner, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Joe Tippett, Santino Fontana, and others, as well as Isa Briones and Patrick Ball.
The company around John Lithgow includes Elliot Levey, reprising an Olivier-winning performance as Dahl’s Jewish publisher, Tom Maschler; Aya Cash as U. S. publisher Jessie Stone; and Rachael Stirling as Felicity Crosland. The supporting cast includes Stella Everett as Hallie and David Manis as Wally, with understudies Geoffrey Cantor, Annie Hägg, Eleanor Handley, and Paul O’Brien. Casting is by Daniel Swee.
What if the play’s 1983 setting reframes Roald Dahl’s controversy in sharper relief?
The drama takes place in 1983 in a makeshift dining room at Gipsy House, Dahl’s countryside estate. In the story, Dahl—played by John Lithgow—is about to publish The Witches and is already known for major books including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, and The Twits. But the play’s pressure point is not literary success; it is a public rupture.
Within the plot, Dahl has published a review of a book of photographs about the war in Lebanon titled God Cried. The review includes Dahl’s assessment of Jews—“Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much pitied victims to barbarous murderers. ”—and asks, “Must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?” In the play’s narrative, outrage from the public ensues.
That lens also intersects with a broader cultural conversation referenced around the production: in 2023, hundreds of words in Dahl’s books were altered or omitted from future printings to remove negative references to race, skin color, ethnicity, gender, disabilities, and more. In that context, Giant positions the backlash not as a footnote but as the engine of the drama, concentrating attention on what gets said publicly, how it lands, and what institutions and individuals do next.
What happens next for ‘Giant’ after opening night attention and awards momentum?
The London production earned three 2025 Olivier Awards, including Best New Play and acting wins for Lithgow and Levey, and those credentials arrive on Broadway alongside the same core creative leadership and principal performances. The production’s Broadway presence is backed by a full creative team: scenic and costume design by Bob Crowley, lighting design by Anna Watson, sound design by Darron L West, and wig, hair, and makeup design by Campbell Young Associates, with production management by Juniper Street Productions.
Producers for the transfer include Brian and Dayna Lee, Stephanie Kramer and Nicole Kramer, Josh Fiedler and Robyn Goodman, and Royal Court Theatre. With opening night now in the rear-view mirror (ET), the near-term question is how audiences and the wider theater community respond to a work that explicitly dramatizes public outrage over Dahl’s remarks, while arriving at a time when Dahl’s legacy is already being revisited through edits to his published texts.
For El-Balad. com readers tracking how culture is reshaping reputations in real time, the immediate takeaway is clear: Giant is built to provoke discussion about authorship, prejudice, and accountability, and its Broadway run will unfold under the heightened visibility that comes with a high-profile transfer led by john lithgow.
