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| October 10–November
2, 2003 |
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| CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE |
Photographs by Mark
Oristano
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| Lawson Taitte, The Dallas
Morning News |
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Uptown Players hasn't missed a
step since it was founded two years ago. But nothing it has
done to date quite prepares you for its Kiss of the Spider Woman.
This musical adaptation of the Manuel Puig novel and subsequent
film about two prisoners in a Latin American penitentiary has
seldom been revived since its original Broadway run and tour
in the early 1990s – for good reason.
It's an epic work on a difficult subject.
And it demands the full resources of a Broadway stage. It's
also a dance musical that requires three genuine stars.
Uptown has expanded the playing area
in the smallish Trinity River Arts Center. But it's still
a challenging place to try to mount this sprawling show, with
its long score written by John Kander and Fred Ebb (whose
previous works include Cabaret and Chicago).
The Uptown production, under the direction of James Paul Lemons,
sails past every obstacle. It's sharper than many a Broadway
tour – and even some New York originals.
In Terrence McNally's book, a leftist
political prisoner, Valentin (Skie Ocasio), is thrown into
a cell with a gay sex offender, Molina (Donald Fowler). Molina
is attracted to Valentin but doesn't want to get involved
with his politics. Instead, he fantasizes constantly about
movies. His favorite star is Aurora (Linda Leonard), whose
roles include an evil spider woman who symbolizes death to
Molina.
Ms. Leonard has done a lot of fine work hereabouts, but –
once again – nothing quite like this. She's one of maybe
three area performers who could dance the role. And she dances
it very well. What's so remarkable, though, is the way she sings
the Kander and Ebb songs. Her style can remind you of Lotte
Lenya and Marlene Dietrich and Chita Rivera (who created the
role). But it's also uniquely her own. And, if anything, she
acts with more variety and detail than even the great Ms. Rivera
brought to the part.
After a string of great roles, it was
predictable that Mr. Fowler would make an impressive Molina.
You could argue that he (and Mr. Lemons) have taken too formal
and affected an approach to the part. But you can't deny that
he's very moving in the climactic scenes or that he sings
magnificently.
In his Dallas debut, Mr. Ocasio makes
a stunning Valentin. Macho and sensitive, an extraordinary
singer and a brooding presence, he gives a matchless performance.
Except for a few minor sound glitches, every element of the
show keeps to this high standard, even the male dancing chorus
– which may be the biggest surprise of all. |
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| Elaine Liner, Dallas Observer |
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In Kiss of the Spider Woman, the
haunting Kander and Ebb musical now running at the Trinity River
Arts Center, two men share a tiny prison cell in Argentina.
Molina (Donald Fowler) is doing three years for sex with an
underage boy. The ironically named Valentin Paz (Skie Ocasio)
has been locked away for espousing Marxism in a violent political
faction. They are an odd couple. Effeminate Molina flaps back
and forth between cots like a trapped sparrow. Macho Valentin
loses patience with his cellmate and orders him not to cross
a chalk line drawn down the center of the filthy floor. Of course,
these two men will grow to love each other. How soon it will
happen and how far it will go are two of the intrigues that
keep the audience in suspense through this show's two acts and
more than 20 songs.
Based on a novel by Manuel Puig that became a 1985 film that
won an Oscar for William Hurt as Molina, Kiss of the Spider
Woman evolved into a hit on Broadway with a book by Terrence
McNally and music and lyrics by the same duo who wrote Chicago
and Cabaret. McNally's work here is particularly witty, and
he's woven several dark mysteries through the plot lines. Will
Molina get out of prison in time to save his ailing mother?
Will Valentin return to Marta, the wealthy young woman he secretly
loves? Which of the prisoners will betray the other to earn
freedom?
Perhaps the biggest mystery in this engrossing production is
how the Uptown Players managed so successfully to stage a huge,
complicated musical in their small venue. The Trinity River
Arts Center is a comfortable but by no means roomy theater.
But as directed by James Paul Lemons (on loan from WaterTower
in Addison), with choreography by Paula Morelan and musical
direction by the multitalented Scott Eckert (fresh from sell-out
performances of his new play Lesson 2: Hamlet at Pocket Sandwich
Theatre), this Kiss of the Spider Woman makes the walls appear
to expand to sprawling Broadway dimensions. Designer Andy Redmon
has worked some special alchemy on what could be a claustrophobic
set, putting the four-sided cell on wheels so that it revolves
and adding an upper level upstage that appears and disappears
in the mist just like the show's title character. That's theater
magic.
The show sounds big, too. The five-piece band (Eckert and Jeff
Crouse on keyboards, Paul Dutka on reeds, Phil West on trumpet,
Jay Majernik on drums) handles the difficult score with ease,
soaring to the rich sound of a full orchestra. This show has
lovely music, if no big breakout tunes. Kander and Ebb's score
reveals a mite too strong an influence from Evita.
All the leads here give fine performances. Fowler, seen in musicals
at Uptown (A New Brain), Lyric Stage (Titanic) and WaterTower
(Rockin' Christmas Party), has never sung with a richer, clearer
voice. As Valentin, Dallas theater newcomer Skie Ocasio is by
turns menacing and vulnerable, with a voice that thrills. And
then there's the Spider Woman. What a pretty, poisonous creature
this character is, played with sinewy arms and piercing eyes
by the smoky-voiced Linda Leonard. The character exists only
in the dreams of Molina, who uses memories of his favorite diva
and her old B-movies to drown out screams of tortured prisoners.
Molina is convinced that a kiss from Spider Woman spells death.
Whenever she appears, her dance leads to tragedy. When Leonard,
wrapped in a revealing mesh dress, slithers across the prison
bars like a black widow on a newly spun web, watch out. She's
trouble. |
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| Perry Stewart, Star-Telegram |
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There were reasons to suspect,
before the fact, that the Uptown Players' regional premiere
of Kiss of the Spider Woman was going to be a rewarding evening
of theater: the fistful of Tony Awards this musical won on Broadway;
Uptown's impressive track record; and Linda Leonard revisiting
the songs of John Kander and Fred Ebb.
This transplanted Chicago performer made her
North Texas debut a decade ago at Fort Worth's Stage West
in the Kander & Ebb revue And the World Goes 'Round. Later
she choreographed that show in Dallas. Lusty applause greeted
both efforts. Now it's time for shouted bravos as Leonard
assaults the title role in this grimly beguiling tale of the
human spirit at odds with inhumanity.
Uptown's stylish production, which doesn't
shrink from mature-audience aspects, opened Friday at the
Trinity River Arts Center.
The time frame of Terrence McNally's book
(based on Manuel Puig's novel) is 1973, the setting a prison
in Argentina. Cellmates Valentin and Molina are, respectively,
a political activist and a gay man jailed on a morals charge.
To combat boredom and brutality, Molina concocts
fantasies involving Aurora, a 1940s B-movie actress whose
signature role was the Spider Woman. Her appearances take
the form of musical numbers corresponding to the often ostentatious
tastes of Molina, a department store window dresser.
Seizing the bait, director James Paul Lemons
and choreographer Paula Morelan fill designer Andy Redmon's
gloomy and cunningly functional set with desperate movement.
Molina's orientation notwithstanding, Leonard is the queen
on this chessboard as she soars beyond the vocal and dance
demands of the role.
In contrast to the Spider Woman's lush and
cheesy numbers are the sadly hopeful musings of Molina, played
with heartbreaking poignance by Donald Fowler. If Leonard
and Fowler are known and appreciated quantities hereabout,
newcomer Skie Ocasio is an intoxicating surprise.
Ocasio invests Valentin with virile charm
and a robust tenor, adding a touch of naivete that serves
the character well. He and Fowler share a wonderful and revealing
interlude as they recall past loves.
Two major moments in Kander's score are unabashedly operatic:
Dear One, in which Fowler and Ocasio are joined by Jenay Puckett
(as Molina's mother) and Amy Fisher (as Valentin's girlfriend);
and The Day After That, in which Valentin and a chorus of prisoners
invoke the spirit of One Day More in Les Miserables. |
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