Dave Davies

Lithgow's current play, Giant, is set in 1983, when Roald Dahl ignited a controversy by writing an article with views that were widely seen as anti-Semitic.

In the play, Dahl and his fiancée are at home in discussion with a British and an American representative of Dahl's publishers, who want him to say something to soften his message and diffuse the controversy.

It soon emerges that the American rep is a practicing Jewish woman, and Dahl isn't backing down.

The play was first performed in London, with Lithgow starring as Roald Dahl.

He and the play won Lawrence Olivier Awards, the British equivalent of the Tony.

John Lithgow, welcome to Fresh Air.

You're playing Dahl who is kind of – it's oversimplistic to call him a villain here.

But he's a very problematic character.

Did you feel empathy for him and how did you connect with him?

Why don't you just tell us a bit about the action in this play?

It's you as Roald Dahl and your fiancée and two representatives from your publishers.

Give us a sense of what the issue is and what happens.

There's a distinction to be made between criticizing the policies of the Israeli government and condemning Jewish people as a whole.

But the lines can get fuzzy and assumptions can be made that anti-Semitism is at the heart of anybody criticizing Israel.

And I think part of the brilliance of this play is that in the first act, when we don't learn Dahl's exact words from the article he wrote or other comments that would be made public later, we're kind of invited to explore our own feelings about this and think,

Maybe Roald Dahl is just making a point about the conduct of war and not about the Jewish people.

Right.

And the debate gets increasingly personal.

And in the end, Dahl says some things which – I mean I was at one performance and there was one comment.

I'm sure it's the one you know that the audience audibly gasped.