‘Kiss’ As A Musical? Surprisingly, It Works

“The Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Wednesday, April 30, Spokane Opera House

Yes, I admit, up until the moment the curtain rose, I was still skeptical about how the musical version of “The Kiss of the Spider Woman” had become such a big Broadway hit.

Now that I’ve seen it, I know exactly why: sheer theatricality.

Here is a musical that does what the stage does best; it creates an illusion of reality that is at once starker, brighter, simpler, funnier, more heroic and more tragic than reality itself.

And it doesn’t hurt that the plot echoes the theme. It’s about a gay window-dresser, Molina, who survives his imprisonment by re-creating in his head the movies of his youth, which are brighter, simpler, more heroic, etc., than his cell-bound reality.

“Kiss” does this, foremost, through visuals. This touring production has sets based on the original Broadway design. The main set piece consists of prison bars and prison cells stretching up to the roof. Through clever projection techniques, the jail also seems to stretch off into the distance. Projection techniques are used later to convert the stage into a spectacular ‘40s-style moviehouse for the big finale.

It’s not all sets and lighting, of course. This jailhouse story incorporates old movie-musical scenes between scenes of prison torture and squalor. Thus, composers John Kander and Fred Ebb toss in some high-energy production numbers, mostly starring Aurora, a ‘40s movie star who is also the Spider Woman of the title. The wildest and most entertaining of these is a big jungle number, with Aurora dressed as a bird, fighting to get out of her gilded cage.

This number, and several others, recall the abandoned creativity of Busby Berkeley and the great era of movie musicals. They are carried by the sheer talent of Sandra Guida, an Argentine stage and screen star, as Aurora. Guida has the fiery presence of Chita Rivera, the moxie of Liza Minnelli, and the legs of Gwen Verdon.

Despite all of this window-dressing (pardon the expression), this is still a story of a cell-block friendship (and more) between a flaming gay Brazilian man and a tough Latin American revolutionary, Valentin. True to the usual trajectory of an opposites-thrown-together story, Valentin starts off hating the sight of Molina, but gradually grows to respect and like, and maybe even love him.

Ross Stoner plays Valentin with a tough, no-nonsense effectiveness.

However, the star of the show is undoubtedly Brian Barefoot as Molina. Tall and willowy, he swoops around the cell as if he were a grand princess, chattering nervously and non-stop about movies and fabrics and waiters. At first, we in the audience share Valentin’s original opinion: We just might go insane if we are stuck in a cell with Molina for two hours.

But Barefoot, through Terrence McNally’s sensitive book, soon shows us the humanity, wounded as it might be, beneath the surface. Molina is a weak, weak man, as he himself says. But in the play’s finale, he proves himself to be as strong as any leading man in any of his precious ‘40s movies.

I do have one quibble of a technical nature. Guida’s climactic song, the title song, was virtually ruined by her mike volume being set too high. This song was supposed to be powerful, but instead it was just painful.

I still don’t think this story necessarily has universal appeal, which probably explains why the Opera House was only about halffull on Wednesday night. A love story about two men in a prison cell isn’t everybody’s idea of a good time at the theater. However, the themes are universal, and you’d be hard-pressed to find themes expressed with such vivid theatricality.

, DataTimes