Does ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ Get Caught in Its Own Celebrity Web?

There have been odder page-to-stage, stage-to-screen, screen-to-song-and-dance-extravaganza case studies than Kiss of the Spider Woman, which began life as Argentine writer Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel about sex, fantasy, and betrayal in prison. Several theatrical productions were mounted before filmmaker Hector Babenco turned the story into an Oscar-winning film starring Raul Julia and William Hurt in 1985; cut to eight years later, when a musical adaptation took Broadway by storm and swept the Tonys. The forms were many and varied, but the song remained the same: Two cellmates, a political revolutionary and a gay window dresser, fall in love. The molten core of their amore? The movies.

Specifically, a 1940s B-picture conjuring up some heavy Maria Montez mojo, known as Kiss of the Spider Woman — a typically hyperventilating melodrama that featured a vamping diva playing several parts, including the venomous title character. The window dresser, Luis Molina, would regale his fellow prisoner, Valentín Arrugui, with each plot twist and turn. Quicker than you can say “Give me the cobra jewel!” the two men forge an intimate connection over this rehashed celluloid trashterpiece. Tragedy strikes. Roll credits-slash-curtain call.

You could certainly do worse than hire a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away — was a good choice. He can radiate righteousness, as well as pulling off the dashing movie-within-a-movie matinee idol. Enlisting the mono-monikered, genderqueer Mexican performer Tonatiuh to portray Molina was an even better call; from the moment this relative newcomer comes onscreen, you feel like you’re in the presence of someone who knows the assignment, and can sell both a wounded inmate and a dapper fashion editor’s assistant from an old-school Hollywood romance. A star is born, etc., etc.

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As for a spider woman who could out-Chita-Rivera the part’s originator, Chita Rivera? Where most would go high, the producers went J.Lo. And here’s where things get complicated. Because on paper, this reads like a coup: Jennifer Lopez possesses exactly the kind of five-alarm diva aura that you need for Ingrid Luna, a.k.a. “La Luna,” the screen siren Molina worships. “No matter how hard Hollywood tried to make her seem all-American, she never stopped being Latin,” her incarcerated fan cools about the star, and that goes double for the woman playing the part. Add in the fact that Condon stages the recollected musical sequences like an MGM Freed-Unit fever dream — not to mention giving Lopez the chance to truly go full vamp as the villainous “Spider Woman,” rocking a Lulu Brooks bob and black-widow cocktail attire — and you have something connecting one era of Tinseltown glamour and erotic moxie with another. A win-win, the kids call it.

Except, much like the prison scenes, Kiss of the Spider Woman‘s reality ends up being much harsher than the fantasy. Every single number here feels a few beats off in one way or another, whether it’s the various nightclub tangos or the mountain-villa daydreaming of “An Everyday Man.” Even the dual showstoppers, “Where You Are” and “Gimme Love,” feel curiously D.O.A. The former plays out as one long homage to Judy Garland’s “Get Happy” mixed with an abundance of Fosse-lite touches, all swiveling hips, fondled hat brims, and backup dancers in black mesh tank-tops. Considering Condon was one of the forces behind the 100,000-watt version of Chicago that took Best Picture in 2002, it’s depressing to see him stage a 100-watt retread of that same aesthetic that constantly feels on the verge of a brown-out. This Kiss of the Spider Woman synthesizes a half dozen Vincente Minnelli-meets-Marilyn musical numbers, minus the sweat and soul of the originals. No one would dispute that Lopez has the chops to make stuff like this work most of the time. So why does the sight of her, bottle-blonde and clad in a green dress that screams vintage Dream Factory glitz, still give off such deflating Jenny-from-the-block vibes?

The true death knell, however, is the fact that its dreary and dreamlike aspects — the very juxtaposition that gives Kiss of the Spider Woman its aenima and its sting — sit too uneasily next to each other, as if both halves were stuck in a separate conversation instead of talking to one another. These sequences feel so siloed that the misery never informs the majesty, or vice versa. Only Tonatiuh rises above the sticky mess; he alone seems to find the necessary balance between high camp (not even a line like “he was the biggest queen this side of Danny Kaye” can sink him) and grounded tragedy that fuels the back and forth work. He makes the material sing, even when he isn’t singing himself. Otherwise, a spectacle that’s supposed to be an ode to the power of Hollywood hokum simply becomes the minor-key embodiment of it. What a tangled web it weaves.