I said it all at the Royal Court – https://theatrecat.com/2024/11/09/giant-royal-court-theatre/ – and it is an event not to miss, especially the way the world is in 2025. Everything i said there i felt and saw again.
But here are brief reflections on how it felt going back..
1 There have been murmurs, one or two in print, of worry about audience laughter. In case it meant sympathy with Dahl’s antisemitism. I heard none of this: all the laughs were at absurdity, and in the right spirit.
And when Dahl shockingly doubles down in he Coren call a great shocked sigh at the Hitler line was real.
2 – Lithgow catches, in this brilliantly balanced and intuitive script, the quality in all bigotry that hunches close to paranoia: persecuted by a bad back, envious of other writers – and his own illustrator Quentin Blake – he clings to his distaste and medicates it with his claim – not all false – to compassion for Gaza.
And at the same time this human frailty, which we all feel in ourselves sometimes, has its faint wounded echo in Jessie. And on Maschler’s collaborative, sensible, practical attempsts at defence.
3- Humans protecting one another can always hide within the “doesnt really mean it” defence.
But Jessie, alone, really does. Which underlines how muchmof the play is about Englishness – noticing the Maschler “Provence” riposte – and as a young friend told me aster seeing the Anne Frank play, American Jews are different from Englisn Jews
4 – it works just as well in a bigger theatre. That’s proper power. And I had forgotten how stunning the seconf half is..
So do go. b now at
Haroldpintertheatre.co.uk. to 2 august. but Here again is the full first review
theatreCat 