Daring to Do A Texas-Size Task: Create a 'Giant' of Note

At first, Sybille Pearson didn't think the challenges of transforming "Giant" the novel into "Giant" the musical would be daunting. No, she thought they were insurmountable.

After being asked by composer Michael John LaChiusa whether she was interested in writing the show's libretto, Pearson raced to a library, pored over Edna Ferber's sprawling 1952 Texas novel and came to an absolute conclusion.

"I said to my husband: 'Impossible!' "

As with so many certainties in life, however, this one proved less than airtight. Pearson, who years before wrote the book for the Richard Maltby Jr.-David Shire Broadway musical "Baby," thought about it some more. The marriage at the novel's center -- between a hidebound Texas rancher and a worldlier young woman from the East Coast -- ultimately revealed to her a rich imaginative palette. And the story's bifurcated world, of privileged Anglos and hard-pressed Mexican Americans, also opened up intriguing thematic threads -- in ways not fully explored in the 1956 film version starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean.

So Pearson gulped and said yes, and LaChiusa hit the keyboard. And now, perhaps the most daring project in Signature Theatre's 20-year history is about to reveal its melodies and psychological complexities to the world. With a cast of 21, a score 4,200 bars long, a $1 million-plus budget and a running time approaching four hours, "Giant" is sure to do one thing: live up to its title.

"It's like 'Angels in America, the Musical,' " Eric Schaeffer, Signature's artistic director, says with a laugh, in a reference to Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork.

Schaeffer -- who's already had a good month, upon learning that his theater has won this year's special regional-theater Tony Award -- would be thrilled if "Giant" has anything remotely close to the seismic impact of "Angels." But that's a long shot: A wide public embrace has eluded the 46-year-old LaChiusa.

A craftsman of passionate if cerebral idiosyncrasy who marches to his own convention-defying drummer, LaChiusa has admirers if not a huge following. His music is highly demanding and his subjects highly unlikely, from his adaptation of García Lorca's "The House of Bernarda Alba" to a musical portrait for Signature of van Gogh in the 2004 show "The Highest Yellow." His musical treatment of "The Wild Party," Joseph Moncure March's Jazz Age poem, starred Eartha Kitt and Mandy Patinkin but closed on Broadway in June 2000, after only 68 performances.

Some of those who've heard his score for "Giant," however, say that this one might hew more closely to popular taste than some of his other works. Bruce Coughlin, who created the orchestrations for the show, describes the work as "fun, because it's so tuneful." Schaeffer adds, "This is his most accessible piece, which is really exciting."

Sitting a few weeks ago in a room filled with vending machines, a floor beneath "Giant's" Manhattan rehearsal studio, LaChiusa professed admiration for Schaeffer's instant openness to the composer's epic vision of the piece. "I knew it was going to be huge," LaChiusa explains. "I was thinking three acts -- maybe over three nights.

"I said to Eric: 'I do have an idea, but I want to do a three-act version.' He said: 'Of course.' Because he's Eric."

The three-act musical, featuring a mostly New York cast -- best known to Signature audiences might be Lewis Cleale, veteran of the company's well-received "Passion" in 1996 -- marks another significant milestone for Signature: It is the first fruit of an extraordinary gift that came the Arlington troupe's way three years ago. The Shen Family Foundation, a philanthropy overseen by a New York devotee of musical theater, Theodore P. Shen, and his wife, Mary Jo, gave Signature $1 million to support the work of three composers, whose resulting musicals were to receive productions there.