4 commentsDallas — This review of Giant, the new musical that opened on Friday evening at the Dallas Theater Center, will concentrate on the music part of the production, although some comments on the show itself will be unavoidable.
Giant, like the 416-page novel by Edna Ferber (who also wrote Show Boat) and George Steven's three-and-a-half hour star-laden 1956 film, is a expansive tale about the life of Jordan "Bick" Benedict (played by Aaron Lazar), a Texas cattle rancher who brings Leslie (Kate Baldwin), a high society wife from Virginia, home to his tumbleweed and dusty Big Bend area ranch. It covers roughly 30 years of their tumultuous life and touches on the themes of the racist treatment of the Mexican workers and the changes wrought by the sudden wealth that the discovery of oil bestowed on plain ol' ranch folk.
This version, with music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa and a book by Sybille Pearson, had its first outing in Arlington Virginia at the Signature Theatre in 2009. While the show is long now, it was even longer then. The version at the Dallas Theater Center has thankfully been tightened up and the former three acts have been reduced to two. It still feels long, especially when the second act gets preachy, but the show moves along at a breakneck pace trying to pack in all of the plot details. For example, their children first appear as teen-agers in a plot leap of 16 years or so. There are some significant deviations from the film, as the musical adheres more closely to the novel.
Like in opera, it is the music that ties together this far-flung plot. While there is some dialogue, most of the show is sung and that really helps to keep it moving. Long stretches of Texas-twanged dialogue would have weighed down the show.
LaChiusa's music is one of his best scores. While it always sounds like his distinctive voice, he covers quite a range of styles. The composer appears to have tried to match a musical genre to the specific situation. When the bad-boy nemesis Jett Rink (PJ Griffith) sings about his redneck car, we get some old fashioned rock n' roll. "Topsy-Turvy", a song about getting out of your comfort zone is a soft shoe, a song about poker is jazzy. "Jump," the youngsters' song about breaking out of the restrictions of their situation is reminiscent of the high school '50s era sock hops in the gym. There is some country western, some swing, a little blues, some Mariachi and a smattering of Texas anthems.
All of this is accompanied by a fairly large orchestra that is on a raised platform across the back of the stage. They appear and disappear by virtue of a scrim that raises and lowers for no apparent reason. The conductor (Chris Fenwick) has absolutely no contact with his singers on the stage. This would be a disaster in an opera or a show with more variations in the tempi of the music, but not so much in this case.
Once LaChiusa starts a song, it perks along to the end without much variation. The main complaint about the orchestrations (by Brice Coughlin) is that they are treble-heavy. There is not much in the bass register to ground the sound. As a result, even though there are a full complement of one-on-a-part players (strings, winds, brass, percussion, and keyboards), it still sounds tinny. There is a string bass, but it was barely audible and the bassoon, which could have been used to good effect in its lower register, was only noticeable as a solo instrument.
The big problem with the music, as in other LaChiusa shows, is its forgetability. While the music is effective, and even inspiring, at every moment, there are no big tunes to go home humming. A big memorable ballad or a catchy up-tempo number would go a long way towards sticking the music in your brain.
There is a perfect opportunity for such a ballad at the end of the show when the son, Jordy (Matt Doyle), has a touching moment with his Mexican, pregnant wife, Juana (Natalie Cortez). They are romantically perched on a water tower overlooking the ranch, which is as much a character in the show as the people who live on it. Here, LaChiusa misses his opportunity to write the "big tune" of the show that everyone will go home with in their ears. This, he doesn't do. It is just some more of his attractive scale-based chatty music.
All of the singers, mostly New York-based, do a fine job and have typical Broadway voices. They all oversing, but that is to be expected in musicals these days.
The whole show is amplified. In a barn like the Music Hall at Fair Park, amplification is absolutely needed, but here in the small confines of the Wyly Theatre, it would have helped the sound of the show immensely to have forgone the blaring electronic sound. Perhaps, this would have even helped the orchestra. While the amplification was less objectionable on the leads, it mangled the blend of the chorus.
I suppose that Broadway shows just have to be amplified these days, even if you are performing them in a smaller venue, but I just don't see why. All of the singers in this cast have fine, well focused, voices that could project unaided. Worse, the amplification adds a harshness when they push and it is impossible to determine whether that is a vocal flaw that is really there or not.
These quibbles aside, Giant is an excellent show with much going for it. The three seemed to fly by. The actors are all excellent in their roles and create believable characters and situations. Pearson's book is clever with many laugh-out-loud lines and all of the songs are engaging, whether they are sad, touching or funny.
The Texas thang is overdone. There is even a schoolmarmish history lesson wedged in between the family pathos, and it is uncertain how all of that will play in the rest of the country (especially New York). The audience loved the show and, with a few reservations, so did I.
◊ To read David Novinski's theater review of the production, go here.
◊ And here's our Q&A with Michael John LaChiusa. 
