Theater Review : Chita Rivera’s Spin : Veteran Actress Brings Glamour to ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’

Whatever else it may do, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is the musical that most frankly and seriously addresses the question of why gay men love musical theater. The 1976 novel by Manuel Puig is also about the usefulness of fantasy, but this 1993 adaptation centers on the Broadway brand of musical fantasy and its importance to gay culture.

Created by men steeped in a lifetime of theater, songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb, bookwriter Terrence McNally and director Hal Prince, “Kiss” stars another lifelong pro, the magnificent Chita Rivera, who is the centerpiece of this first-rate touring production, playing at the Orange County Performing Arts Center through Jan. 6. The show then goes on to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium and lands at the Ahmanson in March.

“Kiss” tells the story of two prison cellmates and how they manage to make life bearable amid systematic brutality. They do so by inventing an alternate universe so emotionally hypnotic and enthralling that it can be lived in for long periods of time, something theater people do regularly. The story the novel tells, of an impassioned Argentine political prisoner who learns a new kind of compassion, is not the tale that most interests these creators. Marred a bit by the grim and sometimes pretentious machinery of the plot, “Kiss” is not a great musical. But when it is working, it is a riveting one.

Valentin (Dorian Harewood) is the political prisoner, one of the 15,000 or so who were “disappeared” and systematically tortured under the military government that ended in 1983. Strident and noble and humorless, Valentin is at first offended by his homosexual cellmate, Molina (Juan Chioran), a department-store window dresser who has been jailed for corrupting a minor. Molina routinely escapes into the movie melodramas of his youth, each one of them starring Aurora (Rivera), the glamorous heroine in a turban and jewels.

Molina tells the plots of Aurora’s movies to drown out the sounds of a tortured scream or the humiliating taunts and sexual degradations of the prison guards. As Molina recounts the films, Rivera dances them out, striding across the stage in tails, high-kicking a fabulous leg or sashaying hips enfolded in canary-yellow plumes that match her headdress. She shimmies with four bare-chested revolutionaries-turned-chorus-boys. When they bow down and she lays her sinuous body over their backs as they move her across the stage, Valentin and the audience alike are captivated.

Choreographers Vincent Paterson and Rob Marshall show off their legendary star beautifully (would that Marshall had done the same for Julie Andrews in “Victor/Victoria”). This is not so much a role as an aura of fabulousness and glamour. Rivera is not the sexy temptress that Sonia Braga played in the 1985 film, but a shimmering show-biz perfection with supreme confidence, guts and skill, the kind of heroine that lovers of musical theater have always worshiped and always will.

Valentin comes to see that Molina’s fantasies do not trivialize the seriousness of life but instead bravely insist on creating something better. From Valentin, Molina learns a seriousness of commitment, which drives the plot forward to its inevitable grim conclusion, where even death is transformed into a sleek musical extravaganza with white tails and polished choreography.

The score, which has been richly orchestrated by Michael Gibson, is at its best in Aurora’s throw-away show-biz numbers, songs given an unexpected and serious sheen by their context. Kander and Ebb also write wonderful songs of longing, as the men recall the tenderness of a mother (Merle Louise) or a lover (Lauren Goler-Kosarin).

The score is at its worst in the strident numbers of the revolutionaries, songs that loudly insist on their own importance. The revolutionaries’ anthem, “The Day After That,” features a lackluster lyric that says nothing. In another of Ebb’s unconvincing touches, the prisoners recall that “there are big-busted women over the wall.”

Valentin is a thankless role and I have never seen an actor make it interesting. Harewood does what can be done; he is serviceable. Molina is the show’s heart.

Tall, with long hair swept back to emphasize huge, rueful eyes, Chioran is evocative and haunting when executing a bit of Prince’s brilliant staging. As Aurora performs, he silently echoes her choreography, straightening his back and prayerfully following her moves. When speaking, he perhaps relies too consistently on a tremulous voice to express the character’s obvious vulnerability, but Chioran holds the show together.

Molina’s spirit touches a chord in the heart of the no-nonsense revolutionary. It is there “Kiss” makes its case, that, like Marxist Utopias, musicals imagine a better world, one if not worth dying for, at least worth living for.

In Molina’s imagination, Aurora eventually turns into her scariest role, the Spider Woman, an alluring personification of death. Under Prince’s exacting spell, she will snare you in her web as surely as she does Molina and Valentin. With help from set designer Howell Binkley and lighting and projection designer Jerome Sirlin, Prince paints masterful pictures on the stage.

A tiny cell surrounded by darkness opens up, with cinematic suddenness and scope, to become a huge grid of cells, a whole interconnected system of oppression and misery. On top of that steel grid is projected, at times, the web of the Spider Woman that encases the prison, transforming it into another kind of inescapable universe, one of equally mythic proportions.

* “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m. Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m. Sunday, at 7:30 p.m. Ends Jan. 6; (714) 740-2000, (213) 480-3232, (714) 556-ARTS. $19-$49.50. Also, Jan. 10-14: Pasadena Civic Auditorium, 300 E. Green St., (213) 480-3232. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

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Juan Chioran: Molina

Michael McCormick: Warden

Dorian Harewood: Valentin

Wade Williams: Esteban

Robert Jensen: Marcos

Chita Rivera: Spider Woman/Aurora

Merle Louise: Molina’s mother

Lauren Goler-Kosarin: Marta

With: Richard Amaro, Lloyd Culbreath, Richard Montoya, Sergio Trujillo, Todd Hunter, Pete Herber, Joshua Finkel, Gary Schwartz, Gary Moss

A production of the Orange County Performing Arts Center and LIVENT (U.S.). Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Book by Terrence McNally. Based on the novel by Manuel Puig. Directed by Harold Prince. Choreography Vincent Paterson. Additional choreography Rob Marshall. Sets and projections Jerome Sirlin. Costumes Florence Klotz. Lights Howell Binkley. Sound Martin Levan. Orchestrations Michael Gibson. Musical director Rob Bowman. Production stage manager Dale Kaufman.