Kiss of the Spider Woman

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.

Our Review:

26 April 2007

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 wom...

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Latest User Review

rds - 26 May 2007:

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....

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