John Lithgow

But it is something he literally said.

It's an unspeakable turn of phrase.

And it's like... It is the moment at which people see the very darkest side of Dahl.

And they see it very clearly.

And it's right near the end of the play.

So, in a sense...

The whole play has been building to that moment.

My challenge in playing the role is to spend the whole play motivating that moment, almost explaining that moment, explaining it emotionally as much as politically.

Well, that was my way in.

He had a very hard life.

There are several elements.

You know, when you ask yourself what makes him hate like that, the various clues I found had to do with his upbringing and his experiences.

He was born a Norwegian of a Norwegian family, but that family lived in Wales.

His father had been brought to Cardiff to work in the shipping industry.

But off he went to English boarding schools at Repton.

He was an outsider from the get-go trying to get on the inside.

And in his life, he just suffered these terrible losses.

In the same year, when he was very young, he lost both his father and his older sister.

He went off to prep school where he was brutally beaten and

He had a horrifying plane accident in World War II when he was an RAF fighter pilot, a solo accident in the Libyan desert when, by rights, it should have killed him, but instead it just left him in terrible pain for his entire life.