Ten pages. That's how far Tony-winning director John Doyle got into Harvey Fierstein's book for the musical "A Catered Affair" before he picked up the phone and called the "Hairspray" star to say that he wanted in.

The product of their 15-month collaboration comes to fruition this weekend with the opening of "A Catered Affair" at the Old Globe Theatre. The 10-character musical -- with a score by John Bucchino in his Broadway debut and a blue-chip cast headed by Faith Prince, Tom Wopat and Fierstein -- opens Sunday in a pre-Broadway tryout set to debut in New York next spring.

Based on a 1955 teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky (later adapted on film by Gore Vidal), "A Catered Affair" is the emotional drama of working-class Bronx couple Tom and Aggie Hurley struggling over whether to invest their life savings in Tom's cab-driving business or blow it all on a splashy wedding for their daughter, Jane.

Brooklyn-bred Fierstein said he discovered the movie version (starring Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine) as a boy, when he faked illness to stay home from school and watch it four times in one day on television's "The Million Dollar Movie."

Although Fierstein (an actor/playwright whose four Tony Awards include two each for his "Torch Song Trilogy" and "La Cage Aux Folles" scripts) said he loved its "very human story," he thought it could use a tweaking and he saw ways to musicalize it.

"I don't believe in remaking things that are perfect, but this had flaws. I didn't think the themes of the show were exploited properly. I thought if I could clarify the themes and retain Paddy Chayefsky's spirit and Gore Vidal's intelligence, I'd have something," Fierstein said during rehearsals at the Globe a few weeks ago.

"This is a story about living," said Fierstein, who rewrote the comic role of Aggie's brother, Uncle Winston, for himself. "It's not about getting by. It's about paying attention and living your life to the fullest."

Fierstein's next step was finding a composer, and he settled on Stephen "Wicked" Schwartz's best friend and colleague Bucchino, a cabaret songwriter little known outside New York but much admired in the musical theater world (some of his many fans and friends guested on Bucchino's 2003 CD "Grateful," including Judy Collins, Liza Minnelli, Kristen Chenoweth, Patti LuPone and Adam Guettel).

"I wanted someone who could touch the human heart, a composer who reflected the speaking style of the characters in his music, and when a friend recommended I listen to "Grateful," I heard two songs and thought, 'oh s--, this is it.' "

But Bucchino, who was in the midst of producing a revue of his own songs, didn't bite.

"He turned me down," Fierstein said. "He didn't like theater, wasn't interested in collaborating and wanted to do his own thing. But eventually we got together and wrote the show undercover. And then I met John Doyle."

Doyle has made a big splash on Broadway in the past few years with revivals of "Sweeney Todd" (for which he won the directing Tony) and "Company," both of which were minimalist in style and had the actors playing all the instruments onstage. Doyle was looking to do something new when he met Fierstein (who joked that he showed up at the first day of "Catered Affair" rehearsals with a musical triangle in hand, but Doyle took it away from him).

The Old Globe entered the picture when one of Doyle's other projects -- a revival of the musical "Barnum" that was set to anchor the Globe's summer season -- fell through because of licensing issues. In its place, Doyle offered the Globe the tryout rights for "A Catered Affair."

"It was a dream to have this come our way," said Lou Spisto, the Globe's executive director, who said the season-opening "A Catered Affair" is the Globe's 20th Broadway-bound project. "When we read it, we saw it was very different from everything else out there, and to have artists like John (Doyle), Harvey, Faith (Prince) and Tom (Wopat) is a great honor."

As Broadway musicals go, "A Catered Affair" is on the small side. Capitalized at $6.5 million (about half the cost of "Wicked"), the musical has just 10 characters -- the bride, the groom, their parents, uncle Winston and three neighbor women, who are seen and heard only through their Bronx apartment windows and function as a sort of musical Greek chorus. There are no dance scenes or major production numbers, and the musical's running time is just 100 intermissionless minutes.

Fierstein embraces the musical's uniqueness.

"I think we're doing something different here," said Fierstein, who is one of the musical's co-producers. "In musical theater, we've gotten bogged down with the style of talk, talk, song, talk, talk, talk, song. I wanted a musical where the words and the songs are seamless, where the ends of the songs are gone and the musical is built right into the scenes."

The musical's casting is also a breakthrough in some ways. It will mark Prince's Broadway return after a self-imposed, five-year absence, and it's the first time Wopat has originated a role in a major Broadway musical.

After her Tony-nominated turn in yet another revival -- 2001's "Bells Are Ringing" -- Prince and her family left New York for L.A. so she could find daytime work in television and spend more time at home with her husband and now-12-year-old son. But lately she'd been itching for a Broadway comeback, and "A Catered Affair" came to her (via a phone call from her agent while she was driving down the I-5 from Sacramento) "as if a comet came through the windshield of my VW bug."

"I loved this character," Prince said, of Aggie. "First of all it was my own age and I didn't have to try to be thinner or younger. She had complexity, pathos, irony, humor and a journey that is unbelievable. I was struck by how the character was cold yet warm at the same time -- like Mama Rose as written by Chekhov."

And Prince is thrilled to be sharing the stage with Wopat, whom she's done two shows with as well as a series of concerts. "We've got great chemistry," she said.

Wopat returns the love. "I don't know anybody who can do this role better than Faith," he said. "She's a very talented woman who hasn't had a lot of opportunities lately, and this is a spectacular vehicle for her to come back with."

Wopat may be best known for his role as Luke Duke of the 1970s TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard," but the 56-year-old actor's Broadway career stretches back 20 years, he earned a Tony nomination for his rugged performance as Frank Butler in "Annie Get Your Gun," and he has several solo albums to his credit.

Wopat first joined the "Catered Affair" project a year-and-a-half ago, reading for the smaller role of the groom's father at a New York run-through. Although he admits it took him some time to embrace the idea of playing a father figure onstage, the musical's lead role of cabbie Tom Hurley had a strong appeal.

"It spoke to me," said Wopat, who was raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm. "My father was in that age group and I grew up working class in the same sort of hardscrabble environment. It really resonated with me."

Also appealing to Wopat was Fierstein's "spare, linear and incredibly moving" book and Bucchino's "eclectic, deeply personal and subversively humorous but not sentimental" score.

"A Catered Affair" started rehearsals in New York in mid-August, then moved to the Globe in early September.

Prince described the rehearsal process under Doyle as a gradual but revelatory process, where minute details and the constant repetition of scenes work these characters into the actors' fiber.

For example, in a scene where Prince was supposed to be preparing supper for her family, Doyle brought dead fish to rehearsals, which Prince was told to scale, gut and fillet while she delivered her lines. "I almost threw up," she said of the fish-deboning experience, "but I knew what he was getting at, and I would do it again."

Although Doyle has spent most of his life in England, and had never stepped foot in the Bronx before reading Fierstein's script, he said there's something universal about Tom and Aggie's story that he hopes comes through in "A Catered Affair."

"As a director, you're always looking for something that speaks to your own experience, and this really made me care," Doyle said, adding that rehearsals have been a lot of fun. "We've had a great laugh, and if we can have a good time honestly telling this story, maybe that will translate to the audience."