It was partly Roald Dahl’s physical height and towering reputation that inspired the title of Mark Rosenblatt’s triumphant debut play Giant, which explored the national treasure’s shockingly vicious antisemitism. But Rosenblatt would have also been thinking of the giant in one of Dahl’s best-loved tales.
Unlike The Witches, which was adapted into a musical by the National Theatre in 2023 and which in Rosenblatt’s play is the subject of a tense exchange that sees the author accused of having Jews in mind when he created the conspiratorial cabal of child-killers, Jewish theatregoers can relax with this latest of many page-to-stage adaptations of Dahl’s work.
Will this one be as popular as the RSC’s adaptation of Matilda? No. Not least because this is not a musical but also because it does not have an enriching Tim Minchin score destined to be in the repertoire of every child who likes to sing.
Instead we have Tom Wells’s adaptation, which does an efficient job of getting plot points across. During one of his regular trawls through night-time London capturing children’s’ dreams, BFG kidnaps orphan Sophie because she has witnessed his silent progress through the capital’s streets. She is in his sack as he skates and bounds across the British Isles back to Giant Land.
Here we soon discover that the big fella’s fellow giants are not only much bigger but much meaner. To stop them invading London to eat humans, BFG and Sophie head back to the city with a plan to conscript the help of the Queen.
The monarch is played by Helen Lymbery, who captures Elizabeth’s no-nonsense generosity of spirit. However, Wells’ script hones in on her solitude. The resulting moral about the importance of friendship whether you are a Queen, an orphan or a giant lands sweetly yet without much emotional heft.
It doesn’t help that Wells expands the flatulence reference in Dahl’s book into a scene where the entire cast break wind to music. The kids will love it, you can hear director Daniel Evans and his team convincing each other. Maybe they do. But nothing advertises the absence of good ideas like a fart joke.
However, what works extremely well is the way in which old-school stage craft toys with scale. The show has a pleasingly theatrical rough magic compared to the slick special effects seen in other adaptations such as Paddington.
It takes no less than three BFGs to convey the giant’s size relative to those around him. When he is a 20ft puppet operated by four human beans, Sophie is a real-life little girl (played on press night by Ellemie Shivers).
When he is played by John Leader, Sophie is a puppet who can sit in the palm of his hand, and when the big fella is in the company of the much larger Bloodbottler, the FG, now a doll, turns out not to be so B after all. As Rosenblatt so ably illustrated, even giants can be small and a bit pathetic.
The BFG
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
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