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‘Giant’ and the Seduction of Certainty

Mark Rosenblatt's play understands something essential and terrifying: great artists are not incapable of prejudice any more than brilliant scientists or clear-sighted politicians. Instead, their greatness often gives their prejudice a greater reach.

Giant takes place on a scorching summer’s day in 1983, in an elegant, ramshackle English country home. Roald Dahl, the world-famous children’s author, is in a terrible mood. His body is wracked by pain, his new book, The Witches, is about to be released, and a public outcry about his recent book review—a coruscating critique of Israel’s siege of Beirut the year before, melded with antisemitic stereotypes—hangs in the air.

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His fiancée and British Jewish publisher........

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