AUTHOR LIKES IT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE : CREATING ‘SPIDER WOMAN’--THE PLAY

Before the movie, but after the novel, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was a play.

The U.S. premiere of that play is scheduled for the Cast Theatre Saturday. Once again, Molina and Valentin--the gay window dresser and the Marxist activist--will fall in love against a background of romantic movie fantasies and the harsh terrain of their mutual Argentine prison cell.

Manuel Puig, who created the couple in 1976 for his novel, prefers the play to the movie--which isn’t surprising, as he wrote the play but had very little to do with the film.

“I was pleased with the effect the movie had on audiences, but I don’t like the movie itself,” he said, by phone from his home in Brazil. “There’s more of me in the play. It’s my view entirely.” (Allan Baker is credited with “adapting” the play, but he acknowledged that--with the exception of perhaps 10 lines--his role was to translate Puig’s Spanish, not to adapt it.)

Puig felt that Molina (William Hurt’s role) “overpowered Valentin” in the movie. “On stage, I try for more of an interaction.”

He also appreciates the fact that the stage version is equipped with fewer visual aids. Instead of seeing scenes from the movies on which Molina dotes, the audience at the Cast simply listens to Molina as he recites the plots. “On screen, you have to give body to those fantasies,” noted Puig, “but in the play as well as in the novel, the audience is free to imagine them.”

In the film, Molina’s primary fantasy was his naive memory of a Nazi-made celluloid romance. It was singled out from the several movie plots that Molina relates in the book because it was the only one Puig had actually invented. The other movies recalled by Molina were real Hollywood cult films. To have used them or re-staged them in the “Spider Woman” film would have cost a bundle for rights.

The play has no such problems. Although he doesn’t mention the title, the play’s Molina recounts the plot of the horror classic, “The Cat People,” at considerable length. Puig believes “The Cat People” is a much more apt “counterpoint” to the story of Molina and Valentin than was the fictitious Nazi narrative used in the film.

Puig initially declined a 1979 request by an Italian company to adapt his book for the stage. “I had spent so many pages to unfold the story in the book,” he recalled, “and I thought every page was necessary.” He was also in the midst of writing another novel, so “I dismissed the offer without really considering it.”

Nevertheless, with Puig’s permission and then with his advice, the Italians did their own adaptation--and created a hit. Soon other inquiries came in. Spanish actor Jose Martin “bombarded me with letters” requesting a Spanish adaptation, said Puig, and actors in Rio de Janeiro “infected me with their interest.” There was also a more troubling incentive--two Peruvian actors began performing an adaptation without Puig’s permission and without paying him a penny.

“When I finally stopped them in Mexico, they made a big stink,” said Puig. “They said I didn’t care for the theater, only for the money.”

Puig’s own version opened in Spain and Brazil in 1981. It has since played in Mexico, Germany, Austria, Holland, and even in Argentina--”the only unsuccessful production so far,” according to Puig. “It opened when the junta’s power was relenting, but before the junta was replaced.”

English-language productions have “up to now been jinxed,” said Puig. One was in the works in 1982, “but there were problems with the first translation. By the time the translation was ready, the producer didn’t want to do it because the (English-language) film was coming out then.”

A 1985 production at a small London theater did well, and there was talk of a move to the West End. But before Puig could even see it, the production collapsed. He blames the release of the movie and the decision of the actor playing Valentin to take a film role. “The moment had passed,” he lamented.

Now, with the Cast production, Puig’s moment may have come again.