Giant - Royal Court / Harold Pinter Theatre

My 2* is entirely driven by the play, not the politics. The problem is, the Dahl character doesn't move, or learn, or do anything other than double down for the entire play. And he never looks like he might. So they're all playing essentially the same dramatic beat over and over - with a set of very familiar arguments. The writer never really drills down into the causes or internal logic of Dahl's antisemitism - other than personal pain and anger at Israel - the nearest we get is a claim that all Jews are complicit -  and because he's so blatantly anti-semitic, rather than a devil-may-care truth teller, it undermines moments that might be interesting - like his digging into Tom's apparent hypocrisy. And the odd moments of empathy that Dahl is made to display don't make us care enough about this aggressive, stubborn, unpleasant character to want to know how he'll act. If a character is aggressive, stubborn, and right, that might make for an interesting play. But it's only Lithgow's brilliant performance that makes this aggressive, stubborn, unpleasant and wrong character actually watchable. With a lesser actor, the play's repetitiveness and stasis would be far more apparent. (Would be interesting, though, to see the same episode written from the point of view of the Tom Maschler character - or from the point of view of the character played by Romola Garai - because these characters are genuinely attempting to grapple with difficult choices.. )