Entertainment

‘Giant’ just isn’t big enough

As befits its title, the new musical “Giant” doesn’t lack for ambition. Based on Edna Ferber’s Texas saga — which inspired a classic 1956 movie with James Dean — this isn’t the intimate tuner you’d expect off-Broadway.

We’re talking a dozen central characters spread over three generations and a 2.5 million-acre ranch. We’re talking cattle and oil, life and death. The Public Theater, where the show opened last night, gathered a 17-piece orchestra and a power cast — Brian d’Arcy James, Kate Baldwin, Michele Pawk, Bobby Steggert — to help deliver composer Michael John LaChiusa’s grand vision.

But while it boasts some bright lights, “Giant” feels almost . . . small. There’s little organic flow, little sense of scope in either Sybille Pearson’s book or Michael Greif’s staging (“Next to Normal,” “Grey Gardens”). They haltingly take us from one scene to another, as if telling the story in shorthand.

One of the novel’s strengths is that it’s told from the point of view of Leslie Lynnton (Baldwin), a young Virginian who moves to Texas after marrying a rich rancher, Jordan “Bick” Benedict (James). We see everything through her eyes: race relations, the abuse of wealth, the competition between old-school cattlemen and rising oil kingpins — the last embodied by Bick’s nemesis, Jett Rink (PJ Griffith, in James Dean’s role).

All these elements figure in the show, and yet they struggle to make an impression. Baldwin and James have little heat as a couple meant to be in lust. Rink fares worse: Ferber’s drunken, violent sociopath has turned into a dull bad-boy loner. He’s also become one point in a triangle with Bick and Leslie, when the core, more volatile relationship is made up of Bick, Leslie and Texas itself.

Surrounding them is a parade of characters who are barely introduced before being thrown into a plot-heavy song or a tense scene. Miguel Cervantes delivers a vivid, life-affirming performance in one of the show’s best numbers, “Jump,” but you have no idea who he’s meant to be.

Cervantes is among the assets that make it impossible to dismiss “Giant.” Others include Steggert’s sensitive turn as Bick’s self-effacing son, and the powerful Katie Thompson as Vashti Snythe, who settles for a cowhand because she can’t have Bick. Kenneth Posner’s lighting is striking throughout, casting dramatic silhouettes across the stage.

And then there’s the maddening score. Some songs pulse with affecting melancholy or swinging energy — LaChiusa (“The Wild Party”) can really get that jazzy boogie going when he puts his mind to it. But others are as bland as unseasoned grits, and you wish the composer wasn’t playing nice so much.

Timidity has no place in a show like this one — just ask any Texan.