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                                                                                REVIEWS

THEATER, Page 78

A Musical Hit For London


By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

    TITLE: KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
    AUTHOR: Music by John Kander; Lyrics by Fred Ebb; Book by
Terrence McNally
    WHERE: London's West End

    THE BOTTOM LINE: Bedfellows make strange politics in a
hypnotic anthem to revolution, sexual freedom and old movies.


    American culture vultures generally gush over the vigor
and variety of the London stage and lament that their own
vidiotic society offers nothing comparable. But for the past
couple of years, although London's sheer theatrical volume has
vastly exceeded Broadway's, the quality of new work has been
conspicuously higher in the U.S., and London's saving grace has
been imports, with recent best-play awards going to works from
Ireland, Chile and New York City. The dependence is even deeper
when it comes to musicals. When three opened in one week last
month, the only homegrown entry was Radio Times, recycling
half-century-old songs by the author of Me and My Girl. Another,
Which Witch, came from Norway, although its spellbinding score
and story were hexed by witless local direction.

    The one real success of that group -- in fact, the most
rousing and moving musical to reach the West End since Miss
Saigon -- is Kiss of the Spider Woman, which retells the story
of Manuel Puig's novel and the noted film. The new version comes
from a North American cast and creators, headed by composer
John Kander, lyricist Fred Ebb and director Harold Prince --
the makers of Cabaret, which Kiss often recalls in its silvery
visual shimmer, sexual ambiguity, bursts of surreality and blend
of grim politics and show-biz glitter. But unlike Cabaret,
which used a Berlin nightclub for satiric comment on the rise
of the Nazis, Kiss looks to shadowy passages from old movies for
sentimental uplift. They suggest that art, more than life,
teaches decency and heroism.

    The raw -- very raw -- material is unlikely for song and
dance. The setting is a Latin American prison cell shared by a
man in for political insurrection (Anthony Crivello) and one
in for the social insurrection of homosexuality (Brent Carver).
This musical must be among the first to feature torture,
mutilation and threats of anal rape and is surely the first to
portray one character washing another after a bout of diarrhea.
Book writer Terrence McNally and nonpareil lyricist Ebb make
the points, not always beloved of the Marxist left represented
by the revolutionary, that there is no political freedom
without sexual freedom and that love outdoes ideology at
breeding bravery.

    But the show is far from didactic. This is as much as
anything a musical about the magic of musicals, and its title
character -- sultrily sung and danced with eyebrow-high kicks
by Chita Rivera at 60, an age when she qualifies for a senior
citizen's London bus pass -- is pure fantasy, a bygone film
goddess whose camp theatrics provide the personal mythology of
the gay prisoner brilliantly played by Carver. When life becomes
awful, he escapes into reveries of scenes from her films. And
when life becomes truly unsustainable, he joins her forever in
a brightly lit world of soft shoe and smiles. The real star, as
so often, is Prince, whose staging tricks are as spectacular as
in his Phantom of the Opera. This time they serve a far better
show.