TEXAS, OUR TEXAS: We had the biggest theater debut we’ve had around these parts in a long time on Friday night when the Dallas Theater Center unveiled the reworked version of its Giant musical. So is it worth all the hype? Lawson Taitte enthusiastically says yes. “The question isn’t whether it’s good enough for Broadway. Is Broadway brave enough for Giant?” is how he sums up his dallasnews.com review. But Mark Lowry wasn’t quite as impressed. “Giant is operatic in scope, and many of this puzzle’s pieces are there. But the fit is slightly off,” he writes on dfw.com. There should be more reviews coming out over the next week or so, and when we see them, we’ll pass them along.

PAINTING WEST DALLAS: Shepard Fairey is, of course, best known for the iconic Barack Obama “Hope” posters he designed ahead of the 2008 presidential campaign. But in West Dallas, he may soon be better known for the dozen murals he’s set to paint beginning this week. The project is being managed by the Dallas Contemporary, and its director says that the idea is to find art outside of museums, too. “It’s about saying, ‘Somebody cares about you. We’re adding art to your life. We know you can’t make it to the museum. You’re busy working, or you have a busy family schedule, so here’s something that fits in the matrix of your area, where you live,'” Peter Doroshenko tells dallasnews.com.

THE NEW KIDS IN TOWN: A few weeks ago, I popped over to the new Oliver Francis Gallery in Dallas to speak with Kevin Jacobs about his new art space. The current show features the artwork of Michelle Rawlings, a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design who also happens to be the daughter of the Dallas mayor. She spoke with the Art This Week team about the show in a video interview.