Theatre in Review: Giant (The Public Theater)

	Brian D'arcy James. Photo: Joan Marcus

As we all know, they do things bigger in Texas, and that goes for musicals, too. But the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's the case with Giant, a new musical carved out of an old Edna Ferber potboiler about a couple of generations of Texas ranchers and oil barons. It's a choice of source material that proves remarkably infelicitous. Yes, I know that one of Ferber's novels gave us a little thing called Show Boat, but Oscar Hammerstein II's libretto gave that classic musical a strong dramatic spine, tracing a single troubled love affair and marriage across decades of social change. Giant is sorely lacking in such an organizing principle; instead, it is a mass of plot lines, characters, and commentary, all crowding each other out as the show lumbers along to the three-hour mark.

Sadly, Sybille Pearson, the librettist, has been unable to chart a clear course through the overwhelming details of Ferber's expansive family romance. The heart of Giant is the relationship between Jordan "Bick" Benedict, a Texas born-and-bred cattleman, and Leslie Lynnton, a genteel daughter of Virginia who becomes his wife. He is a well-read rancher, with a couple of years at Harvard under his belt and a working knowledge of Emerson; she is fed up with genteel living ("I hate calling cards") and is captivated by his vision of a land where stifling social rules don't apply. They marry a few days after meeting, and, upon her arrival at Reata, the Benedict ranch, Leslie experiences a rude awakening. She finds herself alone in the family manse, stranded on a property approximately the size of Rhode Island, while Bick disappears to tend his cattle. Everyone treats her as an outsider, and, when she involves herself in the life of a family of poor Mexican workers, scandalizing the ranch community, she realizes she has a lot to learn about the unspoken rules of life among the Benedicts.

There's plenty of material here for powerful drama, but Bick and Leslie are all too often swept aside by a legion of other characters, most of them involved in subplots that end up stuck in neutral. There's Luz, Bick's older sister and de facto mother, who hates Leslie at first sight; she quickly dies and is left to hover on the sidelines as a ghost who speaks only to Bick. There's Vashti, who thought she had a claim on Bick and marries another rancher on the rebound; she gets one or two big numbers before being relegated to the background. Jordy, Bick and Leslie's son, rebels by studying medicine and marrying a nice Mexican girl; Bick is infuriated but nobody finds time for a scene resolving matters between father and son. As it is, Jody is lucky; his sister, Lil Luz, gets one number hinting at a plot line, then pretty much drops out of the story altogether.

Lil Luz's song, "When to Bluff/One Day" is sung with Jett Rink, who is the biggest casualty of this adaptation. An insolent young ranch hand, he uses his resentment of Bick and his infatuation with Leslie as fuel for his ambition, building an oil company that threatens to put the local cattle ranchers out of business. This is the role played by James Dean in the famous George Stevens film, in which he is a permanent thorn in Bick's side, challenging him in business and romancing Lil Luz before ending up a broken-down alcoholic. Here, he is a minor irritation who shows up from time to time, his relationships with both Benedict women cut down to nothing. His transition into a political figure, spreading noxious racial hatred, comes out of nowhere. His downgraded status seriously harms the narrative; it doesn't help that other minor characters are given scenes and numbers that further distract our attention.

Apparently, Giant has lost more than an hour of its running time since its initial engagements at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, and Dallas Theatre Center, which may account for the choppy, Classics Illustrated approach to the narrative. This puts a huge burden on Michael John LaChiusa's score, which strives mightily to fill in the holes in the plot. This sort of colorful, old-fashioned melodrama is an odd fit for LaChiusa, the most analytical of the current generation of theatre composers, but he puts his formidable musical intelligence to the task of creating the stirring choruses and swelling melodies the material seems to demand. The second number, "Did Spring Come to Texas?", gets things off on a lively note, and "Outside Your Window" neatly sets up a feuding-and-flirting relationship for Jett and Leslie. (Too bad this theme isn't developed any further.) But much of the time, the composer's sensibility seems to be fighting the material, and the strain shows; the climactic duet, "The Desert," may be the first LaChiusa song that could reasonably be called saccharine.

There are several other odd aspects to Michael Greif's production. Brian d'Arcy James is a fine actor with a big voice, but he seems far too sensitive and citified for the stoic, larger-than-life Bick. Kate Baldwin has plenty of spirit as Leslie, but the part is terribly underwritten, and she doesn't exhibit much chemistry with James. By the time Bick and Leslie have their final marital showdown, you may find you don't care much what happens to them. PJ Griffith works hard at giving Jett some kind of presence, but the book lets him down repeatedly. Michele Pawk has a couple of good songs -- "No Time for Surprises," in which she avoids discussing Bick's marriage with him, is particularly strong -- but she is quickly reduced to onlooker status. John Dossett makes a strong initial impression as Bick's uncle, a recluse who inhabits a far corner of the ranch, but he is almost undone by a borderline ridiculous number recalling his youth as a budding concert pianist in Vienna. Bobby Steggart does his best as Jordy, but the role is a standard cardboard male ingénue. There are a couple of nice moments from Mary Bacon and William Youmans as friends of the Benedicts. All of the Mexican characters are one-dimensional emblems of virtue.

The set designer, Allen Moyer, clearly had his work cut out for him, having to fit the large cast, many scenic locations, and a 17-piece orchestra on the Newman Theatre stage. His solution, which places the orchestra above the stage, results in a cramped feeling that isn't really appropriate for a show about people living in the vast Texas expanse. In any case, the lighting designer, Kenneth Posner, floods the stage with beautiful sidelight washes, crepuscular sunsets, and other alluring looks. Jeff Mashie's costumes help us keep track of the changes in eras and the characters' social status. Brian Ronan's sound design, aided by Bruce Coughlin's first-rate orchestrations, results in a remarkable sonic clarity. Thankfully, you can hear every word of LaChiusa's lyrics.

If only somebody had been able to impose some kind of order on this jumble of elements. Because Giant is loaded with more raw talent than any other musical so far this season, the resulting muddle is all the more dismaying. As one of the songs has it, this is "Heartbreak Country." I couldn't agree more.--David Barbour