Will Keen as Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman
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Review Round-up: Critics Caught in Spider's Web?

An altered ending and an undisclosed location have this week split London critics attending Charlotte Westenra’s new revival of Kiss of the Spider Woman, which plays 25 April to 26 May 2007 (previews from 19 April) at the Donmar Warehouse before hitting Liverpool, Bristol and Salford (See News, 28 Mar 2007).

The play - based on Manuel Puig’s novel set in an Argentine prison in 1976 - has maintained the same ending through numerous translations, an Academy Award-winning film and a 1993 Kander and Ebb Broadway musical. Nevertheless, Westenra has chosen to cut short the tale of love and deception for the Donmar production while removing any sense of defined location.

Irrespective of ending and locale, critics have praised the turn of Will Keen – who stepped in at the eleventh hour when Iain Glen withdrew - as Molina, a middle-aged man jailed for his overt sexuality. Co-star Rupert Evans as young Marxist rebel Valentin also receives several words of commendation.

In the play, the two seemingly contrasting prisoners are forced to share a cell. Molina passes the time recounting and reinventing the plot and images of 1942 RKO movie Cat People about a woman who believes she can transform into a panther. As the bond between the men grows, so too does the threat of betrayal.

Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph - “Despite its world-conquering success, (Kiss of the Spider Woman) struck me as a deeply dreary, depressingly predictable piece of work. I can think of pleasanter ways of spending an evening than watching an actor pretending to have diarrhoea. And the way the hardline Marxist and the sad fantasist - the latter obsessed with his mother and fervently wishing that he, too, were a woman - finally become staunch friends and lovers struck me as predictable and trite rather than moving. What little plot there is proves simultaneously dull and confusing, while the final scene is at once sentimental and cruel. Will Keen undoubtedly gives an exceptional performance. Even his precise, hypnotic delivery can't make the description of the old movie interesting, but the sense of unconditional love he brings to the closing minutes is undoubtedly affecting. Unless your idea of fun is being banged up in a squalid prison for two-and-a-half hours, I'd give the show a miss.”

- by Malcolm Rock

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	Kiss of the Spider Woman - 26th Apr 2007 reviews