Kiss of the Spider Woman

Book by Terrence McNally Music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb Directed by Mark Brotherton Winner! Multiple Tony® Awards including Best Musical!

A harrowing tale of persecution turned into a dazzling spectacle that juxtaposes gritty realities with liberating fantasies Cell mates in a Latin American prison, Valentin is a tough revolutionary undergoing torture, and Molina is an unabashed homosexual serving eight years for deviant behavior. Molina shares his fantasies about an actress who portrays a deadly Spider Woman who kills with a kiss in order to distract himself and his new friend from the horrors they encounter in the prison.

Kiss of the Spider Woman won the Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score when it debuted on Broadway.

“Thrilling.”– N.Y. Times

“Compelling, beautiful, funny and moving….[Has] a cinematic fluidity and a poetic charge.”– N.Y. Daily News

“Creates an entire world out of a prison cell…. Dazzling.”– Newsweek

“Capture[s] the magic musicals were meant for.”– Wall Street Journal

“[A] show with a wild heart and a fresh eye.”– N.Y. Newsday

A Note from the Director

A Note from the Director Fantasy and escapism—these two motifs are found throughout the production and in most articles written about the novel, the movie, and the musical. For how does one live under torture, bigotry, and cruelty? Our first nature is to survive, so we look for an escape, we search for other outlets in order to not deal with the world in which we are placed.

Molina and Valentin, our two prisoners, live in this world of heartache and pain. Molina goes to the movies in his imagination with the ever alluring Spider Woman and also fantasizes about being a woman. Valentin clings to the memories of his wife and a fantasy of revolution that he believes can make world a better place. And although these motifs are prevalent and important, I believe that it is the reality of each other’s truth that the two must come to deal with in order to survive. It’s their humanity that saves them, not their illusions of things that cannot be. They must learn to empathize, tolerate, and love someone so different from themselves. It is only then that they learn what it means to survive and finally escape their own prisons.

—Mark Brotherton, Director