ajhlovestheatre

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN

Book by Terrence McNally

Music by John Kander

Lyrics by Fred Ebb

based on the novel by Manuel Puig

directed by Paul Foster

Studio Theatre at Curve, Leicester – until 25 April 2026

https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/kiss-of-the-spider-woman/

Bristol Old Vic – 29 April to 16 May 2026

https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/kiss-of-the-spider-woman

Mayflower Studios, Southampton – 2 to 6 June 2026

https://www.mayflower.org.uk/whats-on/kiss-of-the-spider-woman-2026/

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

Barely seen since the original London and New York productions in the early 1990s, Kiss Of The Spider Woman was beginning to feel like Kander and Ebb’s great ‘lost’ musical. Whether it was the shadow of an icon like Chita Rivera (the original Aurora/Spider Woman on both sides of the Atlantic) or Vanessa Williams (her Broadway successor) hanging over it, or the gleaming cruelty of Harold Prince’s initial staging and concept being deemed too intimidating to aspire to, or the harrowing subject matter, it was beginning to look like this web was never going to be spun again. 

Rejoice then, musical theatre aficionados and anybody looking for a thrilling, edgy evening in the theatre, because this viciously brilliant show is back. In Paul Foster’s pulsating, searing production, as scintillating as it’s dark, a persuasive case is made for this being acknowledged as a true classic, totally worthy of consideration alongside Cabaret and Chicago, the same writers’ better known hits. Based on the 1976 Manuel Puig novel which later became a movie with William Hurt and Raul Julia, it’s set in a prison cell in a fascistic South American state where the inmates are tortured, beaten and generally treated worse than lower life forms. 

Sharing a cell are macho political prisoner Valentin (George Blagden) and flamboyant gay window dresser Molina (Fabian Soto Pacheco) incarcerated for allegedly attempting to corrupt a minor. Molina is an avid cinema fan, using his celluloid-inspired fantasies to escape from his grim reality and the titular Spider Woman is a signature character of his favourite movie star Aurora, but she’s also a terrifying spectre of death who may actually be stalking the corridors of the prison. 

Terrence McNally’s book is a compulsive, occasionally distressing, mixture of harsh realities, jet-black humour and flights of fancy. Under Foster’s assured direction and in the note-perfect performances here, it plays out with the urgency of a thriller and the tenderness of a great romance, which, in a way, is what it turns out to be. McNally keeps deliberately murky what Molina’s true motivations are until fairly late in the play, and, in this production more than in Hal Prince’s fabled original, the nature of the affection that grows out of conflict between the two men is also more ambiguous.

The lightning fast changes in tone throughout Foster’s staging take the breath away. One moment, the stage is a furious pit of roiling despair, the horrific sounds of prisoners being tortured rending the air, the next we are in an exotic fantasia presided over by Molina’s beloved Aurora and her dancing boys, with Joanna Goodwin’s glorious choreography transporting us to the golden age of movie musicals. This juxtaposition of dark and light is tremendously powerful, the one constantly throwing the other into stark, theatrically electrifying relief. 

It takes a star to credibly portray a star and Anna-Jane Casey, with her megawatt smile, wide-ranging Merman-esque belt, boundless charisma and vertiginous high kicks, fits the bill. Her Aurora floods the stage with joie de vivre, while her sinuous, venomous Spider Woman moves seamlessly from soothing enchantment to snarling malevolence with barely perceptible gear changes. This is career highlight work, even by Casey’s standards, and costume designer Gabriella Slade gives her some opulently outlandish creations.

Pacheco is a wonderful find: his Molina is wounded, desperate, emotionally supple yet with a queenly dignity and sly humour. His renditions of the longing, lyrical ballads ‘She’s A Woman’ and ‘Mama It’s Me’ are as intensely moving as they are musically entrancing. He maybe reads as a little young, but that’s a tiny cavil against this star-making performance. 

Blagden, intense and magnetic, is every bit as impressive, the heat of political fervour mingled with rich, rare humanity. When he lets his ringing tenor loose on the defiant anthem ‘The Day After That’, you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Tori Scott is delicate and very touching as Molina’s beloved mother, and Davide Fienauri sensitively sketches in a bewildered waiter Molina was smitten with in the outside world, only to break his (and our) heart later when it’s revealed that his affection was possibly only in the prisoner’s head. Damian Buhagiar is dynamic and deeply horrible as a sadistic guard.

For my money, the score for Kiss Of The Spider Woman is Kander and Ebb’s greatest, most diverse score. From the shimmering foreboding of the title song (delivered here by Casey as an aria equal parts enthralling and downright frightening) through the Latin-inflected production numbers, brassy and fiendishly catchy, to the lyrical ballads, a wickedly funny Imperial Russian pastiche, and the poisoned whimsy of a morphine-induced hallucination with dreamily dancing medics, it’s a masterful collection of songs. Wildly theatrical and consistently exciting, it’s orchestrated by Sarah Travis to make the excellent six piece band sound appropriately epic.

David Woodhead’s chilly metallic set is constantly transformed by a lighting design by Howard Hudson that brilliantly expands and contracts the space according to whether we are in the prisoners heads or in their horrifying daily existences. Andrzej Goulding’s video design is another vital component in the production’s irresistible impact, linking the hellish prison setting with the Technicolor escapism and sepia-toned nostalgia of the silver screen. Matt Peploe’s sound is fabulous too, rousingly loud but not overwhelmingly so, and fully honouring Fred Ebb’s smart, emotionally resonant lyrics. The creative craft on display, both in the material and its execution here, is formidable.

The resilience of the human spirit over unimaginable adversity has long provided fertile ground for musical theatre (hello Les Mis and Miss Saigon) and Kiss Of The Spider Woman is one of the very best examples. But I wonder if the way it steadfastly refuses to sugarcoat the diabolical horrors of injustice and political martyrdom, even amongst and against all the showbiz dazzle, is why it has never achieved the widespread success it deserves. In as audacious example of a show having it both ways as I can recall, the final sequence is simultaneously exhilarating and unremittingly bleak.

Either way, here it finally is in all its uncompromising, glittering, bloody glory, an example of how devastatingly potent musical theatre can be, but seldom is. Foster’s production gives us a rollicking great time but never lets us off the hook. Drop dead gorgeous.