Use the form below to search for tickets on your desired date. Dates from
Synopsis Under an authoritarian regime, Molina and Valentin are imprisoned in a South American jail. Despite their differences, they come to depend on one another and friendship develops. Powerful, lyrical and compelling, 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' examines friendship on many levels as both characters struggle with the uncertainties of truth and falsehood, friendship and betrayal, against a background of cruelty, torture and disappearances.
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.
Michael Coveney for Whatsonstage.com (three stars) - "Will Keen, shaven-headed and finical, wrapped in a Japanese silk kimono over his prison clothes, is a dead ringer for Rocky Horror author Richard O'Brien and has something, too, of that artist’s clipped, dry delivery. Rupert Evans is a helpless victim at all times, pained and bearded, drawn into describing his political activity and inevitably into Molina’s bed, where brisk sexual penetration under the regulation blanket is achieved during a storm-tossed evening. A voice-over (sounding suspiciously like David Ryall) becomes increasingly prevalent, but Westenra has chosen to delete the final revelatory twist in which Molina has second thoughts about his campaign. We’re left with the distinct impression, false to the play, that the waltz of betrayal between the two men is precisely, and finally, that. Still, the production is another impeccable Donmar presentation, with Ben Stones designing a prison of deceptively transparent walls where we catch glimpses of the guards and where Hartley T A Kemp’s lighting and John Leonard’s sound design conspire to convey a sense of both political danger and forbidden sensuality."
Michael Billington in the Guardian (three stars) - "Although Puig's fable started as a novel and has been turned into a movie and a musical, I fail to see its appeal, except as an opportunity for a virtuoso performance. The action takes a long time to develop. If the play works at all, it is as an ironic love story: through his bond with Valentin, Molina is led into an act of unwitting betrayal. The evening's only other virtue is that it provides a showcase for the talent of Will Keen as Molina. Keen has a Guinness-like gift for stealthy transformation. Here he turns himself into someone doubly imprisoned: as a cell inmate and as a woman trapped inside a man's body. And he conveys Molina's inherent femininity with the subtlest of touches: the way he lightly holds a cup with little finger crooked, or by his emphasis on hard, climactic consonants. Keen neither flounces nor prances, but implies Molina's sexual duality through his graceful economy. But, at the end of the day, Puig's play is an etiolated fable that celebrates a belated sexual awakening without shedding new light on life in a police state."
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (four stars) - "Does the two-hander merit the revival that Charlotte Westenra gives it now? Yes, though I don't know why she cuts the original ending, for the effect is like stopping Hamlet just before the killer-duel with Laertes. This means that the emphasis is firmly, almost too firmly, on the growing bond between Will Keen’s Molina, a self-professed 'screaming queen' in prison for homosexuality, and Rupert Evans’ Valentin, who is the sort of dedicated Marxist and would-be revolutionary not liked in 1976 Buenos Aires. If you crave dramatic ideas, they’re there in abundance. But you always feel you’re in the presence of people, not abstract themes."
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail (three stars) - “Good place for a South American prison play, the Donmar Warehouse. Not only is it an overheated and uncomfortable theatre, which is how you imagine an Argentine prison cell to be. Its rectangular stage is also close to the stage, intimate … (but) there isn’t much that is Argentine about this production. (Keen’s) is a performance of great devotion. He really throws himself into the role.”
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.”
Manuel Puig’s 1974 novel of love and entrapment in an unspecified Latin American prison cell has gone through so many transformations that Charlotte Westenra’s Donmar Warehouse revival might seem superfluous to requirements. But the powerful friendship that grows between the Marxist revolutionary, Valentin, and the gay window dresser, Molina, who sees himself as a woman, exerts an undiminished fascination.
The play was first performed here in the mid-1980s at the Bush, where Simon Callow as Molina and Mark Rylance as Valentin played with ferocious, hysterical intensity in stark contrast to the more measured Donmar performances of Will Keen and Rupert Evans.
Then came the film starring William Hurt (Hurt won an Oscar) and Raul Julia and finally a wonderful musical by John Kander, Fred Ebb and Terrence McNally, directed by Hal Prince (at the Shaftesbury in 1992) with Chita Rivera as both Molina’s screen idol and a figure of death and entrapment, the spider woman.
In the play, located specifically in the Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires, we hear the spider woman’s high heels mashed up in the sound effects, but she remains a cat-like creature of prey in Molina’s episodic recounting of a favourite trashy B movie. Molina has been convicted of corrupting minors, while Valentin, 12 years his junior at the age of 24, is an object of ongoing investigation. Just how ongoing becomes gradually apparent as he begins to develop sickness from the prison food. Molina cleans him up and comforts him, but his watchfulness is really surveillance.
As the screws are turned, there are some striking philosophical asides about the nature of sexuality – the idea, for instance, that if men were more like women there would be no more torture – and the increasing pressures of life in a police state. In this way the play becomes one of universal topicality, but whereas the musical expanded the generalities and literally poured them through the outrageous flamboyance of Brent Carver’s big, expressive Molina, the play is assembled in deft touches of revelation and tactical adjustments.
Will Keen, shaven-headed and finical, wrapped in a Japanese silk kimono over his prison clothes, is a dead ringer for Rocky Horror author Richard O'Brien and has something, too, of that artist’s clipped, dry delivery. Rupert Evans is a helpless victim at all times, pained and bearded, drawn into describing his political activity and inevitably into Molina’s bed, where brisk sexual penetration under the regulation blanket is achieved during a storm-tossed evening.
A voice-over (sounding suspiciously like David Ryall) becomes increasingly prevalent, but Westenra has chosen to delete the final revelatory twist in which Molina has second thoughts about his campaign. We’re left with the distinct impression, false to the play, that the waltz of betrayal between the two men is precisely, and finally, that.
Still, the production is another impeccable Donmar presentation, with Ben Stones designing a prison of deceptively transparent walls where we catch glimpses of the guards and where Hartley T A Kemp’s lighting and John Leonard’s sound design conspire to convey a sense of both political danger and forbidden sensuality.
I had high hopes for this play as I sat there in the gloom of the auditorium waiting for it to start, whilst marvelling at the wonderful set. They always do a good one at the Donmar, and Ben Stones' is no exception. I wish I could say the same for the acting. In my humble opinion Will Keen just didn't get it. He had an interesting, almost falsetto, voice, but which was at odds with his butch appearance, and less than impressive attempts at femininty. I suspect Charlotte Westenra, the directed, deliberatly got him to play the part down. But in so doing she has, I am afraid to say, left us with a rather bland characterisation, and one so tedious after that dull first act that I couldn't careless if he and his cell buddy were both taken out and shot. Rupert Evans plays his part as more an irritating student than a "dangerous" marxist dissident. To emphasise my point about underplaying Ms Westenra has the eventual Judas kiss happen so far to one side, and so close to the front edge of the stage that I am sure half the audience missed it. A dud for the usually very reliable Donmar. I wonder if we are seeing the same problem here as that which affected the NT, and also the RSC when their artistic directors buggered off to do other things, namely Broadway, leaving the house alone to fend for itself? Come on Michael start taking control again. - rds
26 May 07
For over two hours very little happens in the Argentine cell of the contrasting Molina and Valentin and what action there is is fairly distasteful. The ending, apparently changed from the original, is also ambiguous and unsatisfactory. And yet, Charlotte Westenra's production is raely less than compelling thanks to two exceptional performances. Will Keen is outstanding as Molina, looking like a camp Grant Mitchell from Eastenders, but it is impossible to take your eyes away from him throughout. Iain Glen is a fine actor but I cannot see him in this part so it may have been fortunate that Keen had to step in at short notice. How on earth this was turned into a musical I don't know, but Kiss of the Spider Woman offers a challenging drama. - David Baxter
04 May 07
This is a very uneven evening, with a first act that drags and a second act that's a cracker. The staging, design and acting is superb, but oh that first 50 mins is dull dull dull.... - Gareth James
Re-opened in 1992. Seats 254. 1999 - Ambassador Theatre Group takes over from the Associated Capital Theatres as the landlord of the Donmar Warehouse. 2002 - Michael Grandage succeeds Sam Mendes as Artistic Director of the Donmar. Nick Frankfort succeeds Caro Newling as Executive Producer.
Whatsonstage.com - Discount London theatre tickets, theatre news and reviews, Theatre videos, Theatre discussion, National Theatre Listings. Covering London's West End, all of Theatreland and all UK theatre. The best
for London Theatre Ticket Discounts.
