That’s entertainment?
One of the world’s favorite actors, John Lithgow, is currently starring on Broadway as Roald Dahl, one of the world’s favorite children’s book authors, in a play all about one of the world’s favorite themes, hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews.
The critically acclaimed show, Giant, is playing to packed houses at the Music Box Theater after an equally successful sold out run in London’s West End.
The plot: it’s 1982 and Dahl, famous for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, has just published a book review containing a scathing attack on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Dahl pulls no punches in his description of Israel as a nation founded by survivors of the Nazis who have somehow turned into Nazis themselves.
Yeah, Dahl goes there.
The author, his wife and his London publisher, a Jew born in Germany during the Holocaust, await the arrival of an emissary from his American publisher, a Jewish woman from New York, last name Stone. Her message: offer some sort of apology for your statement or you’ll lose bookstore owners and librarians and your sales will plummet.
Spoiler alert: Dahl doesn’t apologize.
Instead, he doubles down on the vitriol, condemning Israel and blaming Jews worldwide for supporting what he considers the Israeli government’s genocidal behavior.
He takes aim at Ms. Stone, referring to her snidely as “Stein” in a nasty nod to her Jewishness. To her credit, Stone stands her ground, even at the risk of losing her job, debating with Dahl and standing up for Israel.
If you thought this sounds like a weird thing to write a play about, you’d be right. So we have to ask: why would a show with such a seemingly untheatrical premise become a major hit in the two major theater capitals of the world?
Can you say...Gaza?
John Lithgow is one of those rare actors who can stand on a bare stage, read aloud from the telephone directory (if you’re under 40, Google it), and wow the crowd. He’s that good.
The play is as well-written and dramatic as one might hope, the supporting cast is fine, and the set—Dahl’s London home, under noisy construction, looks great.
But still. It’s a strange topic for a smash hit. You’ve got to wonder how this play made it to the stage right now.
If you don’t know the history, let me reset it for you.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to attack the PLO and end the constant bombardment of its settlements and towns near the Lebanese border. In a black mark on the country’s history, the Jewish state stood by and permitted a massacre of a very large number of civilians in the Lebanese Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. And war being war, more Lebanese civilians died in Israeli attacks on Beirut.
These events raised the ire of Dahl, who had served as a pilot in the Middle East during World War II, and prompted his angry, anti-Israel book review at the heart of the play.
Again, how could a moment in history like this command massive audiences in New York and London? There’s only one answer. Those behind the show saw it as a way to safely, and covertly, condemn Israel from the stage for its recent behavior during the recent Gaza war.
Dahl comes off as nasty and despicable in the show. He doesn’t read aloud his book review with its scathing criticism of Israel. Cleverly, the playwright has Ms. Stein reading it, expressing outrage at his condemnation of the Jewish state. Somehow, coming from her mouth, it’s bearable for the audience to listen to.
Dahl’s perspective on Israel is identical to those in the last few years who ignore the atrocities of October 7 and instead focus on a biased, one-sided view of the Gaza war, posing Israel as the cruel aggressor and the Palestinians as the innocent, passive victims.
There’s no way you could get paying audiences to lay down their money for tickets about bad Israel against good Palestine. But you could put the same message in the mouths of a cast depicting a moment in the life of the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...and pack the house.
Ironically, Jews are the lifeblood of Broadway – many of the theater owners, producers, investors, backstage workers, and audience members are members of the Tribe. So it’s really quite remarkable that a Broadway play could be used as a tool against Zionism and against Jews generally.
There’s a term they use in politics for people who don’t know a lot about what’s going on. They’re called “low information voters” because they get their news from their social media feeds and believe every indiscriminate thing they read and see. Well, I guess Broadway audiences qualify as low information voters because they’re voting with their feet, their wallets, their purses, and their leisure time to witness Israel pilloried on the stage.
I’d love to know that people are seeing the show, feeling a sense of outrage, and taking to their phones or laptops to tell the world that the biases of Dahl don’t reflect the full story of either Lebanon or Gaza. But that’s not happening. Instead, 2,000 theatergoers a night are coming away from the Music Box without realizing that they’ve subjected themselves, at no small expense, to anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, antisemitic propaganda.
None of this diminishes my respect for John Lithgow, one of the actors I’ve always admired most. But there is a whiff of willing idiot about him or anyone who would do this play without realizing the political implications of Israel-bashing before a wide audience on two continents.
Or maybe Lithgow and company know exactly what they’re doing, feel exactly the same way Dahl did, and are happy to have a means of venting their own anti-Jewish spleen.
That’s entertainment?
If you say so.
