BWW Reviews: Balenciaga Is The New Black, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN at Theatre UCF

It's inevitable, like enjoying UCF's hypnotic production, that you'll come face to face with Her kiss. Aurora is her name and playing the dance of death is her game. All I can say is, "Sorry" to those of you that missed out on UCF's KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN.

The play opens as masculine marxist revolutionary Valentin Arregui Paz is mercilessly tortured and imprisoned. His cellmate Luis Alberto Molina, a flamboyant homosexual window dresser, imprisoned for doing the unthinkable to a child, tends to him and nurses Valentin back to consciousness. When he wakes, Valentin quickly finds Molina, the man who literally saved his life annoys him unbearably. Naturally, he retreats from Molina, but as the pathetic cries of tortured men echo throughout the prison and slowly eat away at his soul, Valentin begins to wonder why these noises leave Molina unaffected. Cue Aurora!

Molina welcomes Valentin into his fantasized world of the actress, Aurora. The two slip away into Molina's alternate reality by Drowsy Chaperoneing her films around them. While Molina teaches Valentin the full catalogue of Aurora's acting career, there's one role that come up over and over again: the Spider Woman whose kiss kills.

Tyler Wilkinson as Molina and Andrew Conners as Valentin fluently perform their characters' strengthening camaraderie. The more flourishing and theatrical their cinematic escapists turn, the worse reality becomes as their relationship is tested by the malicious prison guards. Eventually we reach the dramatic finish that pits the men against each other and forces them to decide if their respective significant others on the outside are more important than their companion on the inside.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is a heavy musical, even for 1993 when it premiered, with themes of betrayal, sodomy, rape, and abuse. With a lush score by Kander and Ebb and dark existential book by Terrence McNally, it's an ambitious work to produce for regional theatres and zealous for a university to put on. But director Mark Brotherton doesn't fear Aurora's kiss; he leads a strong cast of powerful leads and a wonderful ensemble that all stand out in their minor rolls. Particular attention needs to be made to Nicholas J. Wood as Gabriel, Molina's surreptitious lover and Fo'i Meleah as Molina's mother .

Set designers Joseph Rusnock and Krystel Colon-Mendoza keeps the perspective fresh at all times for the audience with a jail cell that rotates, slides, and dances around the stage almost as much as the gang of chorus boys and a mystical curtain that appears out of nowhere. Lighting (Bert Scott and Emily O'Sullivan) is smoky and bleak, which is an excellent juxtaposition to John Rudell's showy choreography.

Abby Jaros as Aurora focuses less on replicating the performance that gave Chita Rivera her second Tony Award, and more on creating her own version of the ominous Spider Woman dawning Huaiziang Tan's tastefully sultry costumes. While there was nothing wrong with Ms. Jaros' showmanship, it was Tyler Wilkinson (Molina) and Andrew Conners (Valentin) who deserved the show's final bow.

With sharp scene transitions that rip us out of the prison almost as quickly as it drops us back in there, a cast of full bodied characters, and strong vocal performances by all, Brotherton exceeded my expectations of what a university can produce. KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN at UCF is the apotheosis of educational theatre.