Alice Walker

What do you do when you’re trapped in a Buenos Aires prison? You fantasize about movie stars, of course.

That, at least, is how Molina—a gay window-dresser in prison for “corrupting a minor”—has gotten through his darkest hours. When Valentin, a hunky Marxist revolutionary accused of attempting to overthrow the government, becomes Molina’s new cellmate, the self-described “resident queen” is forced to choose between cooperating with the prison’s wardens to obtain his freedom, and risking his own life to save the man he soon grows to love.

This slightly twisted plotline belongs to The Kiss of The Spider Woman, the latest musical production to come from the Arts Undergraduate Theatre Society. Directed by Renée Hodgins, this play is anything but your average musical. The prison is run by cruel vixens, the innocent are the ones incarcerated, and the love story takes place between two men—one of whom is not homosexual.

Initially, Valentin (Ryan Peters) seems more bothered by Molina’s flamboyancy than by his own imprisonment. While he wants to be left alone to read Marx in bed and dream about his beloved Marta, Molina (Dane Stewart) spends his day re-enacting scenes from movies featuring his favourite movie star, Aurora (Zara Jestadt). Unlike Valentin, who exists in the world of cold, harsh facts, Molina escapes dreary prison life by inhabiting a dream world in which the beautiful Aurora sings and dances his troubles away. The one role Aurora plays that Molina is not tempted by, however, is that of the Spider Woman, who murders her victims with one fatal kiss.

Juxtaposed with scenes of lacklustre prison life are outbursts of song and dance, in which multiple “spider women,” played by girls in tight black pants, shake their asses and perform sultry dance numbers. Always spearheading the dance is the Spider Woman, threatening to assault the prisoners’ imaginations with her tantalizing but lethal touch. In this musical, proscribed gender roles are cast into question, as women are both objects of desire—Molina dreams of Aurora, Valentin of Marta—and also the ones responsible for cruel and unusual torture. The three prison wardens are modern Brides of Dracula, who move in gyrating motion, finish each other’s sentences, and play up their feminine wiles to extract information from prisoners, and Valentin chastises Molina for not acting “manly.” Like the black widow spider, who bites the male spider’s head off once she is impregnated, the women of Kiss are as fatal as they are seductive.

Not an easy or straightforward production to stage, the AUTS manages to pull off the musical with an impressive level of professionalism. The atmosphere is decidedly dark, with black bars framing the stage and serving as an artful means through which the prisoners can move their spider-like limbs. As the composers of Kiss, John Kander and Fred Ebb, are also responsible for shows like Cabaret and Chicago, it makes sense that the show depicts a dark, retro style.

Although quite hammy at times, Stewart’s portrayal of Molina is incredibly poignant; in addition to his Broadway-calibre singing, he manages at once to delight audiences with his off-hand jokes and stir emotion when he faces darker struggles like external homophobia and coercion by the wardens. Peters’s Valentin is less sympathetic, but his hauntingly beautiful vocal performance stirs. Finally, Jestadt handles her role as Aurora with poise and skill, capturing the spirit of the attention-mongering Hollywood actress without hogging the stage herself. The impressive size of the orchestral accompaniment also adds an essential dramatic component to support the singers.  

Based on the 1976 novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig, the play grapples with the price of a disengaged aesthetic perspective; in a world where people are asked to take sides, maintaining that you are simply “co-operating” with an unjust authority is never a neutral stance. While Molina teaches Valentin about the subversive potential of escapism—as well as a few more scandalous lessons—Valentin teaches Molina the value of becoming an engaged citizen. The chorus repeats the haunting phrase “over the wall” to signal a world beyond the prison’s walls, but it is ironically within them that the psyche is able to discover new terrain.   

The Kiss of the Spider Woman runs at Moyse Hall, Jan. 27-29 at 7:30 p.m. $11.