Famous for his witty, often dark children’s books and macabre adult short stories, Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Cardiff, Wales to Norwegian parents who’d relocated to the U.K. He was named after Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (the first person to reach the South Pole in 1911) and stood 6’ 6” — hence the Giant title.

Dahl and his sisters were raised in the Church of Norway. During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force, and his experience as a fighter pilot inspired his early writing. Dahl’s works include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, and The Witches — all of which were adapted into films.

Dahl also wrote screenplays for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice, as well as reviews and essays. It was one of these essays that sparked the controversy dramatized in Giant.

He died at age 74 in 1990.

Rosenblatt’s debut play relies on creative license to come up with the prickly lunchtime meeting between Dahl and his guests bent on getting him to apologize for his writing.

While the afternoon gathering is imaginary, Dahl really did draw sharp criticism for an August 1983 essay in the British magazine Literary Review. The article, deemed antisemitic, centered Australian author Tony Clifton’s God Cried, a picture book about Israel's 1982 siege of West Beirut in Lebanon.

“Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers,” Dahl wrote. His protest of Israel's actions in Lebanon goes on to take a wider, sharper swipe at all Jews: “The authentic tales of horror and bestiality throughout this book make one wonder in the end what sort of people these Israelis are,” he continued. “It is like the good old Hitler and Himmler times all over again.”

While the play concentrates events into a single afternoon, the real Dahl made antisemitic remarks in multiple interviews over the years. In 1990, not long before he died, he said, “I'm certainly anti-Israeli and I've become antisemitic.” After his death, the author’s family and the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in England apologized for his antisemitism.

Rosenblatt began writing Giant in 2018, inspired by the Israel-Palestine conflict that's only intensified since. In a 2024 interview with the The Guardian, he said he’d become “alarmed, as a British Jew, by how openly antisemitic language and stereotyping was blurring with meaningful, constructive debate around Israel and Palestine.” Rosenblatt has also said he used Dahl to explore this topic because of the general public's positive associations with him.

Besides Roald Dahl, the play features two other real figures in the author’s orbit: Felicity “Liccy” Crosland (Rachael Stirling), Dahl's soon-to-be second wife, and Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey, reprising his Olivier Award-winning London role), Dahl's literary agent, who’s there to do damage control.

Rosenblatt created American sales executive Jessie Stone (Aya Cash), who also wants Dahl to retract his statements, for dramatic purposes and to heighten the narrative tension.

Check back for information on Giant tickets on New York Theatre Guide.