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The subject, he says, “ripped me apart.” Because “with Dahl himself, I wrote from a place of both criticism and affection. Here was a man I grew up reading, who helped shape my imagination, and who I now love to read to my children. Yet he was also someone who, by his own admission, hated people like me. So writing about him, or a version of him, was constantly juggling those two truths. And that was often painful.” As with the process of writing about the politics surrounding Israel and Palestine, “writing about each character’s politics with complete honesty and rigor, to dig deep and find everything I could to make their positions real, sincere, and true. But, in doing so, you are painfully reminded of how tragically irreconcilable the deepest and most visceral human truths are.”
As well as a debate about Israel, the play nimbly considers Judaism itself and the “problematic” genius at the table. “For artists, I would extend the Hippocratic Oath: ‘Do no harm and do no crime,’” John Lithgow told me. “But beyond that, I’ve always been on the side of uncensored art. Artists should be free to be who they are. There’s a lot of great art created by scoundrels and a lot of bad art created by saints. It’s up to us to like or dislike any art without being told what’s
good or bad for us. And by the way,” he added, about the fact that Dahl’s publishers recently edited his books to remove language deemed offensive, “they should never have touched Roald Dahl’s prose, which he was obsessively protective of.”
Lithgow plays Dahl as a gentle monster, rising from his chair and standing, towering over his guests. For all his cruelty, he is also generous and kind – the play is tense with a touch of awkwardness. “Contradictory characters are the most fun to play and my main source of income. After all, I am in the business of surprising people,” he says, and “no one is more contradictory or surprising than Roald Dahl”. As the first act ended, I found myself looking around the darkened theatre, counting the Jews. I do that sometimes – more often these days. There are fewer than 300,000 of us in the UK, and while we have much in common at the moment (the itchy feeling of grief, the feeling that we are being scrutinised, the soup thesis), I am also aware that we are increasingly divided by our views on Israel and are held responsible for a morally repugnant war regardless of our connection to the country.
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