Your fave is problematic and always has been.

Mark Rosenblatt's Giant, which is now showing in the West End following its Olivier-winning run at the Royal Court, is not just flavour of the month, it's essential viewing.

Unfolding over a single summery afternoon in Dahl's Buckinghamshire home in 1983, the play explores the fallout from a book review recently written by the author in which he first publicly expressed his anti-Semitism. His panicked publishers are at the door, hoping to do some damage control, but instead of apologising, he doubles down with a childish viciousness so often seen in his books. 

Imbued with Dahl's lyrical use of language, Mark Rosenblatt's script and John Lithgow's jaw-dropping performance capture the mercurial author as he swings from truly compassionate in his regard for children to abhorrent as he cruelly tortures the adults in the room using his misdirected grief from his wartime experiences, twisting it, like so many of his stories, into something disgusting and hard to reconcile. It is remarkable as it is toe-curlingly timely, as both anti-semitism and the obliteration of the creator's reputation by their own hand are issues that are still with us today.

Giant is an astounding example and treatise of theatre and why it must exist to tell these stories, to hold this gut-punching mirror to us all, even if we can't stand what is reflected back. 

At The Harold Pinter Theatre until August 2nd.